| Richmond is part of the problem. The RPA-controlled City Council abandoned street sweeping because people are too lazy to move their cars. Both Gayle McLaughlin and Eduardo Martinez live in the Richmond Annex, some residents of which led the movement to stop effective street sweeping. The RPA likes to tout their environmental credentials, but when push comes to shove, these people are just phonies –they side with the polluters. California to become first state to tackle microplastic pollutionCalifornia to become first state to tackle microplastic pollution (sfchronicle.com)
Kurtis Alexander
Feb. 23, 2022
Trash gathers on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the Berkeley Marina in 2009. Much of the trash flows through storm drains and wind up along the bay’s shore. Microplastics enter the bay in large numbers.
Paul Chinn/The Chronicle 2009
California is set to become the first state, and maybe the first place in the world, to try to limit microplastics at sea.
A state advisory board called the Ocean Protection Council is expected to adopt a plan Wednesday for addressing these pesky particles that flake off tires, clothing, plastic bags and countless other items before making their way to the water.
Microplastics are a big piece of an estimated 11 million metric tons of plastic pollution entering the oceans worldwide each year, according to the state. A startling report three years ago about the amount of microplastic penetrating San Francisco Bay helped push the issue to the forefront. Like in other places, the material is posing an increasing health risk to fish, marine mammals and potentially humans in the region.
But there’s a problem with regulating this pollutant. Only so much is known about it — how it gets to the sea and to what extent it’s there. Also, standards for collecting and measuring microplastics are just emerging, and what level of the material may be safe to tolerate is still unclear.
“We can’t sit around and wait for the science,” said Mark Gold, executive director of the Ocean Protection Council, noting the scale of plastic pollution. “There’s a lot of things we can do in the interim.”
The state’s effort, if nothing else, will help move the technical and regulatory discussion about microplastics forward across the nation and the globe, where similar conversations are just getting under way.
A plastic bag floats in Damon Slough near Oakport Street in Oakland in 2020. Plastic items can break down into microplastics, which can then enter the bay.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2020
Because of the limitations to regulating the material, the proposed Statewide Microplastics Strategy stakes out only so much ground.
The state plan suggests a number of broad actions to reduce the manufacturing of plastic, control plastic waste and educate the public about problems associated with plastic. At the same time, it outlines what gaps in the science need to be filled to move forward with policy, from standardizing measurements of the pollutant to developing safety thresholds.
The policies recommended by the Ocean Protection Council would have to be approved the state’s regulatory agencies before taking effect. The heads of both the California Environmental Protection Agency and California Natural Resources Agency both sit on the advisory council.
Studies have shown that microplastics, when ingested by marine life, can cause tissue inflammation, impaired growth and reproductive harm. A paper published in 2020 found that a toxic material from tire treads was killing as many as 90% of the coho salmon in parts of the Puget Sound.
Research has also revealed the presence of microplastics in the human lungs and digestive tract, though the health impacts for people remain largely unknown.
A 2019 study by the San Francisco Estuary Institute, a research center in Richmond, found that more than 7 trillion pieces of plastic are washing from city streets into San Francisco Bay annually. The estimate, which was based on conceptual modeling, identified tire fibers as the main driver.
“These tire bits can have dramatic toxic impact,” said Warner Chabot, executive director of the San Francisco Estuary Institute. “We’re at the early stages of the science of and regulation of microplastic particles ... but we know it’s a problem.”
Microplastics are generally defined as synthetic particles less than 5 millimeters long. Often, they can’t be seen without a microscope.
The particles can come from larger plastic materials that degrade or are purposely manufactured as “microbeads,” which serve as exfoliants in soaps and toothpastes. Both state and federal laws have begun prohibiting the sale of personal products with microbeads.
California legislation passed in 2018, authored by state Sen. Anthony J. Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) required the California Ocean Protection Council to develop a strategy for reducing microplastic pollution in the state’s marine environment.
The State Water Resources Board is working concurrently to develop a plan for addressing microplastics in drinking water supplies.
Huge amounts of plastic, much of it from car tires, washing into SF Bay, study finds
Plastic particles are raining from the sky — just another front for a pervasive pollutant
Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
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