Brazilian Researchers Find 'Terrifying' Plastic Rocks On Remote Island 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The geology of Brazil's volcanic Trindade Island has fascinated scientists for years, but the discovery of rocks made from plastic debris in this remote turtle refuge is sparking alarm. Melted plastic has become intertwined with rocks on the island, located 1,140 km (708 miles) from the southeastern state of Espirito Santo, which researchers say is evidence of humans' growing influence over the earth's geological cycles. "This is new and terrifying at the same time, because pollution has reached geology," said Fernanda Avelar Santos, a geologist at the Federal University of Parana.
Santos and her team ran chemical tests to find out what kind of plastics are in the rocks called "plastiglomerates" because they are made of a mixture of sedimentary granules and other debris held together by plastic. "We identified (the pollution) mainly comes from fishing nets, which is very common debris on Trinidade Island's beaches," Santos said. "The (nets) are dragged by the marine currents and accumulate on the beach. When the temperature rises, this plastic melts and becomes embedded with the beach's natural material."
The discovery stirs questions about humans' legacy on the earth, says Santos. "We talk so much about the Anthropocene, and this is it," Santos said, referring to a proposed geological epoch defined by humans' impact on the planet's geology and ecosystems. "The pollution, the garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans is becoming geological material ... preserved in the earth's geological records."
Santos and her team ran chemical tests to find out what kind of plastics are in the rocks called "plastiglomerates" because they are made of a mixture of sedimentary granules and other debris held together by plastic. "We identified (the pollution) mainly comes from fishing nets, which is very common debris on Trinidade Island's beaches," Santos said. "The (nets) are dragged by the marine currents and accumulate on the beach. When the temperature rises, this plastic melts and becomes embedded with the beach's natural material."
The discovery stirs questions about humans' legacy on the earth, says Santos. "We talk so much about the Anthropocene, and this is it," Santos said, referring to a proposed geological epoch defined by humans' impact on the planet's geology and ecosystems. "The pollution, the garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans is becoming geological material ... preserved in the earth's geological records."
Working link (Score:5, Informative)
These rocks are a danger to everyone who eats rocks.
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Lava + plastic ocean trash = plastic rocks
But...
Lava + bag of garbage = explosion [youtube.com]
Re: Working link (Score:5, Funny)
Temporary Issue? (Score:2)
Important fact: Volcanoes are Hot. Very Hot. Like Liquid Stone Hot!
And therein lies the solution.
There is not one human-made thermoset or thermoplastic "plastic" compound on this planet that can withstand volcanic temperatures.
Plastic, meet volcano. Poof! Where did the Plastic go?!?
So, in terms of geologic time scales, I simply don't see how this even comes close to an environmentally-changing problem.
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Or we could just cut out the middleman and burn the plastic directly. Poof! No more plastic pollution.
Next up, a compete idiots guide to fixing hurricanes using nuclear weapons.
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There is not one human-made thermoset or thermoplastic "plastic" compound on this planet that can withstand volcanic temperatures.
True but neither can the oil that the plastic was made from and yet that still exists in geological structures so it is logical to assume that plastic will find its way into such structures as well. Not all rocks are formed by lava, you can have sedimentary rocks as well. However, I do not see why this is in any way "terrifying", locking the plastic up inside a rock seems like nature has found a clever way to remove it from the environment.
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The same way "rocks are removed from the environment" and there's no such thing as mineral water..
Given that the plastic in this example started out floating in water, even if the rocks they form remain in contact with water you have still significantly reduced the contract surface area and that's still a win compared to the initial conditions.
From Oil to oil (Score:2)
So the plastic gets bound up with the local soils, sinks to the bottom of the sea, buried under sediment, and after time and temperature breaks down into oil again.
Another side chain in the carbon cycle.
Please Everyone . . . (Score:2)
"The pollution, the garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans is becoming geological material ... preserved in the earth's geological records."
. . . dump your plastic correctly in the oceans so this doesn't happen.
Why terrifying? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, plastic contamination in everything is totally fine. https://newatlas.com/environme... [newatlas.com]
Locking Plastic Away (Score:3)
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Rocks are not permanent. They weather. The plastic portion of these rocks probably will too. The plastic pollution cycle will keep going.
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Yeah, plastic contamination in everything is totally fine. https://newatlas.com/environme... [newatlas.com]
Scary for shizzle, but I kind of doubt that anyone is going to be noshing on these plastic laden rocks.
Vitrification - and this is a crude example of it, is used to lock problem materials in place and render them harmless. https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNE... [epa.gov]
And while it would be nice to have a world with absolutely no evidence that humans or their technology ever existed, it isn't going to happen.
Re:Why terrifying? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The island is very remote, far off the Brazilian coast. There's a very small military base on it, but these plastics are not coming from that. With no other human activity in the archipelligo, the presence of this trash in such a remote location is an indication of just how ubiquitous garbage is becoming. That's the terrifying part. If you believe that we're already living on a garbage world made out of human waste products, and you're okay with that, then you may go about your business.
You are actually terrified that one of the earth's major species leaves trace evidence of its existence on, er, the earth?
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Some people are terrified of their own shadow.
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They just used that word to get attention.
It worked, eh?
It's also the Boy who Cried "Wolf!".
I see a futuristic SF story here (Score:3)
Involving abandoned memory plastic and a versatile gadget that was lost by its owner.
But anyway, this article is chilling.
More doom and gloom when we need solutions. (Score:1, Troll)
It is perhaps important to have reminders now and again about the issues we face but I prefer such reminders to come with proposed solutions. What can we do about plastic waste? I've heard a number of options, likely plenty I haven't heard, and there's likely more to think up.
I've heard of plans to burn plastics for fuel. Plastics are mostly just hydrogen and carbon and so when burned completely they produce water and carbon dioxide. There's going to be people upset about emitting carbon dioxide but giv
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When the issue of plastics at sea was brought up some time before on Slashdot I recall that a majority of it comes from Asia and Africa.
Yeah, this came up semi-recently on Reddit. [reddit.com]
Most of the trash is from Asia.
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When the issue of plastics at sea was brought up some time before on Slashdot I recall that a majority of it comes from Asia and Africa.
Yeah, this came up semi-recently on Reddit. [reddit.com]
Most of the trash is from Asia.
Phillipines is number one, China and Vietnam are right up there, right along with many places in Africa.
I get UN notices about this stuff, and it is simply fascinating to watch them do their tapdance about this. The designated villain in all of this is the USA, as in all of the world's problems, apparently there would be none if we didn't exist. But they do understand that while it's fun to blame us for all problems, we could be nuked into oblivion, and it would be almost no impact on plastic pollution.
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It is perhaps important to have reminders now and again about the issues we face but I prefer such reminders to come with proposed solutions. What can we do about plastic waste? I've heard a number of options, likely plenty I haven't heard, and there's likely more to think up.
I've heard of plans to burn plastics for fuel. Plastics are mostly just hydrogen and carbon and so when burned completely they produce water and carbon dioxide. There's going to be people upset about emitting carbon dioxide but given the option of seeing plastic in a landfill, or floating off to some beach, and then burning coal for energy it seems to me that burning plastic is the better option.
There's going to be issues with emissions when burning some plastics, such as PVC. I recall there was work done to mitigate such emissions. Has there been progress on this? If so then would that not make a good item for Slashdot to highlight and offer discussion about?
There's an option to use plastics as feed stock material for synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels. There's likely been some developments on this somewhere recently. It is still burning the plastic but again this is preferable to putting the plastic in a landfill or dumping it at sea.
When the issue of plastics at sea was brought up some time before on Slashdot I recall that a majority of it comes from Asia and Africa. This might be an issue of higher population but I doubt that is the only factor. There's a poverty issue, people don't have the resources to manage waste properly. There's a cultural issue, people that don't have ownership of the land aren't going to take care of it the same way they do land that is owned collectively. Communism is not environmentally friendly. Bring liberty and freedom to these places and they will have a culture and wealth that will develop environmentally conscious practices. The plastic shown in the photos looked to be mostly all the same color with bits of plastic rope threads in it, this could be from a single fishing net that was lost or dumped at sea. Or perhaps a series of dumping of similar nets. Find out who is dumping these nets, find ways to make this stop, and we might solve a large part of this problem.
Then is the comment on an Anthropocene age. That is an idea that goes way back to describe something other than plastics. It was meant to describe the bits of refined metals, pieces of cement and mortar, concrete aggregate and carved stone, all of which go back thousands of years. People have been leaving this bits around the world for something like 12,000 years. This certainly goes back to the time of ancient Egypt, Rome, China, and various tribes in the Americas, all of which carved things into stone, mined and shaped metals, and certainly by the Roman times were making cement that could last a very long time even when exposed to weathering. Some of these cultures made early plastics by various means, some of these means haven't been figured out yet. No matter the source we can destroy the plastics so they don't pollute the environment.
Christ you like to hear yourself talk.
Step 1) Stop making so much shit out plastic
Step 2) Stop tossing plastic in the ocean
This isn't complicated.
Not sure the fear? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure why it is so important for humans not to leave a mark on the surface of the Earth? Why is it seen as destruction and pollution when humans do it but when animals shit in the woods its seen as "natural". When beavers change and destroy entire ecosystems its seen as natural in some places and invasive in others. I'm not sure why humans seem to think they get to control and dictate what is acceptable changes and which are not. Why is it a problem that a new animal species starts dominating a different ecosystem? Is that not how all the ecosystems formed in the first place? Just because we don't get that magical diversity that we crave in our tiny time sliver doesn't mean we get it. The Earth and life on it will go on with or without us.
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Why is it seen as destruction and pollution when humans do it but when animals shit in the woods its seen as "natural".
Humanity shits out plastic.
I'm not sure why humans seem to think they get to control and dictate what is acceptable changes and which are not.
Because we can and do.
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Not sure why you got modded troll. I see where people take issue with your statement, sure. Plastic is not something found in nature so yeah, we've certainly been adding new parameters to a complex system.
That being said, your comment about beavers leads me to a very valid point: A species may be invasive to an ecosystem... But that happens. That is part of nature and of evolution.
Why is it, that we get SO upset over this? Or certain species going extinct? I get that if statistically speaking "too many" go
...and? (Score:1)
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it's actively a good thing since it's showing plastics being naturally removed from the environment into a non-harmful form.
What causes you to imagine that it is non-harmful? That's the opposite of the truth. Plastics continue being harmful until they are fully degraded. This is just some plastic that has conglomerated, that doesn't change its basic structure.
Plastics degrade, yes? (Score:3, Insightful)
2 things:
1) we shouldn't be using the ocean as a garbage dump
2) this guy makes it sound like the plastic has "become part of geology" implying permanent change to the landscape. My understanding is most plastics disintegrate after a few years baking in the sun. It might take 5, 10, 20 years but the geology has not changed.
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2 things: 1) we shouldn't be using the ocean as a garbage dump 2) this guy makes it sound like the plastic has "become part of geology" implying permanent change to the landscape. My understanding is most plastics disintegrate after a few years baking in the sun. It might take 5, 10, 20 years but the geology has not changed.
Have a seat everyone - Ima gonna spin a tale here. Believe or do not believe,
So let's read a little about plastic - there is so much bullshit and FUD about this stuff that it is amazing that the world is not now a barren rock, careening through the universe, as all life has been destroyed by the ultimate poison.
At least to hear so many people reeeing about it. Exaggeration is intended to get people's attention.
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-... [phys.org]
Lotta bullshit spouted along with the actual plastic
Terrified geologists (Score:3, Funny)
graphic of worldwide ocean plastic polluters (Score:2)
https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com]
Top four: Philippines, India, Malaysia, China...