Is the world being destroyed?

From the great depths of the ocean to the top of Mount Everest, microplastics have been found almost everywhere on the planet. Now, scientists have discovered the tiny plastic particles inside our clogged arteries. The discovery was made by researchers from the University of Campania, who studied more than 200 people undergoing surgeries to clear a major artery in the neck. The study found that nearly 60 per cent of the patients had microplastics or even smaller nanoplastics in a main artery, as per Scientific American.

The study has been published in New England Journal of Medicine.

It said that patients who were found with microplastics in their arteries were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, a stroke or death in the approximately 34 months after the surgery than were those whose arteries were plastic-free.

"To date, our study is the first that associated the plastic contamination with human diseases," said Raffaele Marfella, lead author of the study.

"Our data must be confirmed by other studies and on larger populations. However, our study convincingly highlights the presence of plastics and their association with cardiovascular events in a representative population affected by atherosclerosis," he further said.

Paediatrician Dr Philip Landrigan, professor of biology at Boston College and director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good and the Global Observatory on Planetary Health, said the study provided evidence that tiny plastics may be associated with cardiovascular disease outcomes in humans.

"Although we do not know what other exposures may have contributed to the adverse outcomes among patients in this study, the finding of microplastics and nanoplastics in plaque tissue is itself a breakthrough discovery that raises a series of urgent questions," Dr Landrigan wrote in the study.


In humans, microplastics have been found in the blood and in organs such as the lungs and placenta.

Dangers of microplastics

According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the tiny particles of plastic less than 5 millimetres in size, have infiltrated our oceans, soil, and even the air we breathe.

Inside the human body, microplastics can invade individual cells and tissues in major organs, potentially interrupting cellular processes and depositing endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenols, phthalates, flame retardants and heavy metals.

• Scientists have discerned certain systems that, if they collapse, would spell doom for humanity’s future on Earth.
• A new study analyzes the possibility of such a collapse by creating models surrounding four of these pillars: the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and Amazon Rainforest, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
• The study finds that such a collapse is concerningly likely under current climate policies, and that probability reportedly increases dramatically every tenth of a degree Celsius we blow past our 1.5-degree goal.

If our exploration of the cosmos has taught us one thing, it’s that creating life isn’t easy. First, you need the right chemical conditions (and potentially some cloud-to-ground volcanic lightning) to get things going. But to create complex, intelligent organisms, you need a planet whose climate is relatively stable—allowing for a particularly big-brained species to grow into cultures, then into countries, and then (hopefully) into a planet-wide, peace-loving collective a la Star Trek.

But before we can hop into our Starship Enterprise and explore the galaxy, humanity—as well as every other living thing on this planet—needs climatic stability. And sadly, that’s something the “big-brained” species on Earth is doing a pretty poor job of managing.

To emphasize what a bang-up job we’re doing, scientists have previously identified several tipping points (not to be confused with planetary boundaries, which to put it mildly, are also bad news) that pertain to the certain global climate systems that have kept things running smoothly throughout history.

Four of those pillars of stability are the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and Amazon Rainforest, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)—the ocean current system that keeps Europe several degrees warmer than it otherwise would be. A new study published earlier this month in the journal Nature focused on these elements, and discerned the probabilities of their collapse and the impact on the future habitability of the planet. The results were ... not good.

The paper reads:

“Under current emission trajectories, temporarily overshooting the Paris global warming limit of 1.5 °C is a distinct possibility. Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the probability of triggering climate tipping elements. Achieving and maintaining at least net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2100 is paramount to minimize tipping risk in the long term.”

The study creates a new set of models that treats each of these systems like the pillars they are—that is, if one falls, the rest soon follow suit due to the interconnected nature of each system. According to the paper, “current climate policies until 2100 may lead to high tipping risks,” and that even includes the scenario in which humans get their act together and keep temperature rise below the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold by 2300. In other words, many of these tipping points represent a “point of no return.” Once the tipping point is reached, there is no going back.

The researchers mark the tipping possibility at 45 percent until 2300, and a whopping 76 percent in the long term. Additionally, the study finds that there would be a non-linear acceleration of these percentages for every 0.1 degree Celsius that overshoots the current climate goals. Each tenth of a degree beyond the 2 degree Celsius threshold, for example, adds an additional 3 percent tipping risk, according to the study. The only way to curtail this long-term disaster? Achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2100.

A recent article published by The New York Times detailed how humanity was already entering many threshold ranges for certain tipping points—including the mass death of coral reefs, the abrupt thawing of permafrost, the collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the break up of West Antarctic Ice. The outlook is far from rosy, and while it’s too late to escape this period of anthropogenic global warming unscathed (there are already millions of climate refugees), we have the tools, the science, and the know-how to start treating this climate crisis as the existential threat that it is.

Otherwise, as these new models depressingly predict, any sort of galaxy-traipsing utopian vision could be forever out of our reach.

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, leading researchers to call for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution.

Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow.

Given the research findings, “it is now imperative to declare a global emergency” to deal with plastic pollution, said Sedat Gündoğdu, who studies microplastics at Cukurova University in Turkey.

Humans are exposed to microplastics – defined as fragments smaller than 5mm in diameter – and the chemicals used to make plastics from widespread plastic pollution in air, water and even food.

The health hazards of microplastics within the human body are not yet well-known. Recent studies are just beginning to suggest they could increase the risk of various conditions such as oxidative stress, which can lead to cell damage and inflammation, as well as cardiovascular disease.

Animal studies have also linked microplastics to fertility issues, various cancers, a disrupted endocrine and immune system, and impaired learning and memory.

There are currently no governmental standards for plastic particles in food or water in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on crafting guidelines for measuring them, and has been giving out grants since 2018 to develop new ways to quickly detect and quantify them.

Finding microplastics in more and more human organs “raises a lot of concerns”, given what we know about health effects in animals, studies of human cells in the lab, and emerging epidemiological studies, said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “It’s scary, I’d say.”

‘Pretty alarming’

In one of the latest studies to emerge – a pre-print paper still undergoing peer review that is posted online by the National Institutes of Health – researchers found a particularly concerning accumulation of microplastics in brain samples.

An examination of the livers, kidneys and brains of autopsied bodies found that all contained microplastics, but the 91 brain samples contained on average about 10 to 20 times more than the other organs. The results came as a shock, according to the study’s lead author Matthew Campen, a toxicologist and professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico.

The researchers found that 24 of the brain samples, which were collected in early 2024, measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight.

“It’s pretty alarming,” Campen said. “There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined or been comfortable with.”

The study describes the brain as “one of the most plastic-polluted tissues yet sampled”.

The pre-print brain study led by Campen also hinted at a concerning link. In the study, researchers looked at 12 brain samples from people who had died with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. These brains contained up to 10 times more plastic by weight than healthy samples.

“I don’t know how much more plastic our brain can stuff in without it causing some problems,” Campen said.

The paper also found the quantity of microplastics in brain samples from 2024 was about 50% higher from the total in samples that date to 2016, suggesting the concentration of microplastics found in human brains is rising at a similar rate to that found in the environment. Most of the organs came from the office of the medical investigator in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which investigates untimely or violent deaths.

“You can draw a line – it’s increasing over time. It’s consistent with what you’re seeing in the environment,” Campen said.

Many other papers have found microplastics in the brains of other animal species, so it’s not entirely surprising the same could be true for humans, said Almroth of the University of Gothenburg, who was not involved in the paper.

When it comes to these insidious particles, “the blood-brain barrier is not as protective as we’d like to think”, Almroth said, referring to the series of membranes that keep many chemicals and pathogens from reaching the central nervous system.

Explosion of research

Adding to the concerns about accumulation in the human body, the Journal of Hazardous Materials published a study last month that found microplastics in all 16 samples of bone marrow examined, the first paper of its kind. All the samples contained polystyrene, used to make packing for peanuts and electronics, and almost all contained polyethylene, used in clear food wrap, detergent bottles and other common household products.

Another recent paper looking at 45 patients undergoing hip or knee surgery in Beijing, China, found microplastics in the membranous lining of every single hip or knee joint examined.

A study published on 15 May in the journal Toxicological Sciences found microplastics in all 23 human and 47 canine testicles studied, finding that samples from people had a nearly threefold greater concentration than those from dogs. A higher quantity of certain types of plastic particles – including polyethylene, the main component of plastic water bottles – correlated with lower testicular weights in dogs.

Another paper, which appeared on 19 June in the International Journal of Impotence Research, detected plastic particles in the penises of four out of five men getting penile implants to treat erectile dysfunction.

“The potential health effects are concerning, especially considering the unknown long-term consequences of microplastics accumulating in sensitive tissues like the reproductive organs,” said Ranjith Ramasamy, the study’s lead author and a medical researcher and urologist at the University of Miami.

Meanwhile, a Chinese group published a study in May showing small quantities of microplastics in the semen of all 40 participants. An Italian paper from a few months prior reported similar results.

A handful of studies have also now found contamination in human placentas. A study that appeared in the May issue of Toxicological Sciences reported finding micro- and nanoplastics in all 62 placental samples, though the concentration ranged widely.

In Italy, researchers followed 312 patients who had fatty deposits, or plaques, removed from their carotid artery. Almost six in 10 had microplastics, and these people fared worse than those who did not: Over the next 34 months, they were 2.1 times as likely to experience a heart attack or stroke, or die.

‘Nowhere left untouched’

The Food and Drug Administration says in a statement on its website that “current scientific evidence does not demonstrate that levels of microplastics or nanoplastics detected in foods pose a risk to human health.”

Still, researchers say that individuals should try to reduce their exposure by avoiding the use of plastic in preparing food, especially when microwaving; drinking tap water instead of bottled water; and trying to prevent the accumulation of dust, which is contaminated with plastics. Some researchers advise eating less meat, especially processed products.

Leonardo Trasande, a medical researcher at New York University, said much remains unknown about the impacts of microplastic accumulation in humans. The negative health impacts of chemicals used in plastics, such as phthalates, are better established, though, he said. A study he co-authored found exposure to phthalates had increased the risk of cardiovascular disease and death in the United States, causing $39bn or more in lost productivity per year.

Microplastic particles can be contaminated with and carry such chemicals into the body. “The micro- and nanoplastics may be effective delivery systems for toxic chemicals,” Trasande said.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents plastic and chemical manufacturers, did not directly respond to questions about the recent studies finding microplastics in human organs. Kimberly Wise White, a vice-president with the group, noted that “the global plastics industry is dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of microplastics”.

The United Nations Environment Assembly agreed two years ago to begin working toward a global treaty to end plastic pollution, a process that is ongoing.

Several news reports in the last week suggest that the Biden administration has signaled that the US delegation involved in the discussions will support measures to reduce global production of plastics, which researchers say is critical to getting a handle on the problem.

“There’s nowhere left untouched from the deep sea to the atmosphere to the human brain,” Almroth said.

The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.

It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15% of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said — a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.

Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, a Leeds environmental engineering professor. The other biggest plastic polluting cities are New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah, Egypt.

India leads the world in generating plastic pollution, producing 10.2 million tons a year (9.3 million metric tons), far more than double the next big-polluting nations, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often villainized for pollution, ranks fourth but is making tremendous strides in reducing waste, Velis said. Other top plastic polluters are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight nations are responsible for more than half of the globe’s plastic pollution, according to the study’s data.

City workers remove garbage floating on the Negro River, which has a rising water level due to rain, in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, June 6, 2022.

The United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons (47,600 metric tons) and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tons (4,600 metric tons), according to the study.

In 2022, most of the world’s nations agreed to make the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans. Final treaty negotiations take place in South Korea in November.

The study used artificial intelligence to concentrate on plastics that were improperly burned — about 57% of the pollution — or just dumped. In both cases incredibly tiny microplastics, or nanoplastics, are what turn the problem from a visual annoyance at beaches and a marine life problem to a human health threat, Velis said.

A volunteer stands on top of a pile of rubbish collected that day while participating in the Plastic Cup event near Tiszaroff, Hungary, Aug. 2, 2023.

Several studies this year have looked at how prevalent microplastics are in our drinking water and in people’s tissue, such as hearts, brains and testicles, with doctors and scientists still not quite sure what it means in terms of human health threats.

“The big time bomb of microplastics are these microplastics released in the Global South mainly,” Velis said. “We already have a huge dispersal problem. They are in the most remote places ... the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench in the ocean, in what we breathe and what we eat and what we drink.”

He called it “everybody’s problem” and one that will haunt future generations.

“We shouldn’t put the blame, any blame, on the Global South,” Velis said. “And we shouldn’t praise ourselves about what we do in the Global North in any way.”

A volunteer picks up trash on a river which is covered with trash at Pecatu, Bali, Indonesia, March 22, 2024.

It’s just a lack of resources and ability of government to provide the necessary services to citizens, Velis said.

Outside experts worried that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than overall production, lets the plastics industry off the hook. Making plastics emits large amounts of greenhouse gas that contribute to climate change.

“These guys have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as really just macroplastics that are emitted into the environment after the consumer, and it risks us losing our focus on the upstream and saying, hey now all we need to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary but it’s not the whole story.”

Theresa Karlsson, science and technical advisor to International Pollutants Elimination Network, another coalition of advocacy groups on environment, health and waste issues, called the volume of pollution identified by the study “alarming” and said it shows the amount of plastics being produced today is “unmanageable.”

But she said the study misses the significance of the global trade in plastic waste that has rich countries sending it to poor ones. The study said plastic waste trade is decreasing, with China banning waste imports. But Karlsson said overall waste trade is actually increasing and likely plastics with it. She cited EU waste exports going from 110,000 tons (100,000 metric tons) in 2004 to 1.4 million tons (1.3 million metric tons) in 2021.

Nina Gomes recovers a discarded plastic bag from ocean waters, near Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 19, 2024.

Velis said the amount of plastic waste traded is small. Kara Lavender Law, an oceanography professor at the Sea Education Association who wasn’t involved in the study, agreed, based on U.S. plastic waste trends. She said this was otherwise one of the more comprehensive studies on plastic waste.

Officials in the plastics industry praised the study.

“This study underscores that uncollected and unmanaged plastic waste is the largest contributor to plastic pollution and that prioritizing adequate waste management is critical to ending plastic pollution,” Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council on Chemical Associations, said in a statement. In treaty negotiations, the industry opposes a cap on plastic production.

The United Nations projects that plastics production is likely to rise from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) a year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons, saying “our planet is choking in plastic.”

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ended most uses of the notorious pesticide DDT back in 1972, it wasn’t just because of the poison’s then suspected links to cancer and serious reproductive effects in humans. Evidence also suggested that the chemical would bioaccumulate in living things and persist in the environment for centuries, threatening the health of our children, our children’s children and beyond—a disturbing reality confirmed by recent research.

Now, more than 50 years later, a growing body of research reveals the EPA is failing to fully address a similar, and potentially even greater, multigenerational chemical threat: the skyrocketing presence of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), aptly dubbed “forever chemicals,” in millions of gallons of pesticide products that are widely used across the U.S. PFAS contain chemical bonds that are extremely hard to break, making them difficult to get rid of once they are released into the world. PFAS contamination has been documented in hundreds of species of wildlife from the far reaches of the Arctic to the tropics in the Pacific Ocean. Very low concentrations of many PFAS have been linked to certain cancers, delays in childhood development and immune system dysfunction in humans. Earlier this year the EPA set drinking water regulations for six PFAS, with permissible levels in the excruciatingly minuscule “parts per trillion” range.When PFAS are present in pesticide products, many of which are sprayed on food crops and run off into nearby waterways, people can be exposed by eating contaminated food and drinking contaminated water.

In a newly published study, we and our colleagues from several environmental watchdog groups identified troubling gaps in the EPA’s pesticide approval process that have resulted in the agency failing to fully assess the harms from the growing number of these forever chemicals added to many pesticides. The implications of that glaring lapse could not be more dire. The gaps in pesticide safety oversight—including waiving immunotoxicity studies for pesticide active ingredients, not fully accounting for the partial transformation of pesticides into different chemicals over time and failing to assess the cumulative toxicity of PFAS pesticide use—must be rectified moving forward.
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Around one billion pounds of pesticide products are used each year across hundreds of millions of acres of U.S. farmland, making pesticides some of the nation’s most widely distributed pollutants. Simply put, if the goal was to spread forever chemicals as broadly as possible across the nation, there would likely be no more efficient way of doing so than putting them in pesticides.

Our study found that 14 percent of all conventional active ingredients in pesticides are PFAS. Worse yet, the long-lived chemicals comprise 30 percent of pesticide active ingredients approved in just the past 10 years, meaning that pesticide contamination with PFAS is trending upward and will likely increase in the coming years.

Although PFAS are known to leach from plastic storage containers into pesticides, contamination is more often the result of pesticide ingredients that are forever chemicals in their own right. PFAS pesticide ingredients and their “degradates”—what they turn into after partially breaking down—can stick around for decades or centuries and are incredibly potent. But the more potent and persistent the poison, the more likely it is to cause collateral damage.

The trend is clear: pesticide manufacturers are increasingly in the business of making “forever pesticides.” According to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, the nation annually uses 23 million to 35 million pounds of pesticide ingredients that are PFAS.

Yet what happens to those increasing loads of forever chemicals once they are sprayed on fields is not well understood. The little we do know is extremely troubling: although only about 20 percent of PFAS pesticides have been monitored in U.S. waterways, federal regulators have found nearly all of them in rivers and streams across the nation.

The increasing “PFASification” of pesticides and the resulting environmental contamination are partly the result of regulations that seek to mitigate immediate toxicity concerns without fully accounting for the length of time a chemical will persist in the environment or for the effects of its degradates.

Many researchers now believe that beyond a substance’s overt toxicities, its persistence alone should be a basis for its regulation, because any release of the substance into the environment will likely be irreversible. And as our understanding of PFAS toxicity grows over time, we have found these chemicals are often more harmful than previously thought.

Right now, with summer coming to an end in the U.S., many farmers have already applied pesticides to try to suppress weeds, insects or fungi. That means tens of millions of pounds of forever chemicals were added to the environment this year alone and will remain there, in one form or another, for the birth of your grandchildren’s grandchildren and generations thereafter.

It’s hard to imagine a more frightening indictment of the chemical-intensive agriculture that has been allowed to evolve in this country. But farmers are not the problem here. By not accounting for effects that will be realized decades or even centuries from now, EPA regulators are enabling this type of harmful agriculture.

The only reason the EPA was able to ban incredibly persistent chemicals such as DDT and PCBs in the 1970s was because the agency acknowledged their long-term harm to society and the environment and faced, full-on, the difficult task of navigating the political challenges inherent in banning any widely used pesticide product.

The agency tasked with the job of protecting our health and the environment must pivot and fully embrace its duty to reverse the fast-emerging threat posed by PFAS.

If the EPA fails to face this challenge, it will be responsible for burdening generations to come with increases in deadly, chronic diseases and toxic cleanup responsibilities that will, quite literally, last forever.

Defiant Welby says he won’t be silenced: ‘If it is interfering to seek to avert the climate change catastrophe, let us interfere’

The Archbishop of Canterbury has made a powerful intervention pressing for urgent action to address the climate crisis before it is “too late to save the world”.

Writing exclusively for The Independent, Justin Welby stated that “God is green” and those who claim to be Christian but argue the climate crisis is “a hoax” are wrong. Britain’s chief cleric has defiantly told his detractors he “won’t be silenced” as he enters what he sees as the most crucial debate of the current age.

He said: “If it is interfering to seek to avert the climate change catastrophe, let us interfere.”

His intervention comes as The Independent prepares to host the Climate 100 event in New York with keynote speaker, former prime minister Baroness Theresa May, and publishes its inaugural Climate 100 List celebrating the world’s foremost environmentalists.

Baroness May herself has come in for criticism from members of her own party for pushing the climate crisis agenda, particularly by forcing through the clean air legislation which became the basis of London’s expanded Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez).

And the archbishop, like other prominent figures in the debate, has been the target of political attacks and abuse for taking a stand.

But in the defiant opinion piece, Archbishop Welby insisted that he “will not be silenced” on the issue.

His piece also takes on a growing political narrative from the right of politics against action on the climate crisis.

Donald Trump has described the science behind the crisis as “a hoax”, while Nigel Farage has called it “a scam”, with those claims repeated at the Reform UK party conference last week and at Republican presidential rallies in the US.

But even more concerningly, the climate crisis sceptic agenda has crept into the more mainstream Tory party, with the candidates to replace Rishi Sunak as leader all pledging to row back on measures to help bring down CO2 emissions.

This comes after Sunak postponed targets on banning cars which use diesel and petrol and granted licences for more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Often, politicians claim that measures needed to reduce carbon emissions are too expensive for ordinary people, while others point to countries like China that are not trying to reduce CO2.

In his uncompromising piece, Archbishop Welby made it clear that those with faith should support tackling the climate crisis.

He wrote: “God is green, and He calls on us to be green. It is vital that we tread carefully, and respond to the urgency of the climate emergency, and curb the effects of the climate crisis. And this means waking up to the reality of the crisis.”

He made it clear that he fears that the climate crisis sceptic narrative is too often coming from Christian communities.

He said: “It dismays me when I hear Christians disputing scientific facts or saying that it is simply God’s problem. That is to misunderstand the awesome responsibility that God entrusted us with in caring for his planet and its people.

“It is a moral imperative to do as much as we can not to destroy the green world that God created for us. And we must act now, before it is too late.”

With Mr Trump in the running for a second term as president and resistance to tackling the climate crisis persisting in major powers such as China and India, the archbishop lays out a mission to convert world leaders to the cause of saving the planet.

He said: “We must seek to persuade the powerful that it is in their interest to do good and be green. Some never will and we have to accept that. Cynics, some of whom even call it a hoax, will accuse us of interfering in politics. If it is interfering to seek to avert the catastrophe of the climate crisis, especially as it affects the poorest, then let us interfere. I call it humanitarian care.”

Industrial civilisation is close to breaching a seventh planetary boundary, and may already have crossed it, according to scientists who have compiled the latest report on the state of the world’s life-support systems.

“Ocean acidification is approaching a critical threshold”, particularly in higher-latitude regions, says the latest report on planetary boundaries. “The growing acidification poses an increasing threat to marine ecosystems.”

The report, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), builds on years of research showing there are nine systems and processes – the planetary boundaries – that contribute to the stability of the planet’s life-support functions.

Thresholds beyond which they can no longer properly function have already been breached in six. Climate change, the introduction of novel entities, change in biosphere integrity and modification of biogeochemical flows are judged to be in high-risk zones, while planetary boundaries are also transgressed in land system change and freshwater change but to a lesser extent. All have worsened, according to the data.

Stratospheric ozone depletion has remained stable, however, and there has been a slight improvement in atmospheric aerosol loading, the research says.

At a briefing outlining the findings, Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at PIK and co-author of the report, said there were two reasons the levels of ocean acidification were concerning.

“One is [that] the indicator for ocean acidification, which is the current aragonite separation state, while still being in the safe operating space, is approaching the threshold of transgressing the safe boundary,” Caesar said.

“The second is that there are actually several new studies that were published over the last years that indicate that even these current conditions may already be problematic for a variety of marine organisms, suggesting a need [to] re-evaluate which levels can actually be called safe.”

Ocean acidification was getting worse globally, with the effects most pronounced in the Southern Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, she added.

Ocean acidification is the phenomenon of increasing acidity (decreasing pH) in ocean water due to the absorption of atmospheric CO2. The process not only harms calcifying organisms, potentially leading to food web breakdown, but also reduces the ocean’s efficiency in acting as a vital carbon sink.

“This illustrates the connection between ocean acidification … and biosphere integrity,” Caesar said. “Indeed, one of the main messages of our report is that all nine planetary boundaries are highly interconnected.

“This means that any human perturbation of the global environment that we observe at the moment … cannot be addressed as if they were separate issues, which is how it is at the moment primarily handled. Because this type of approach ignores that the components of the Earth system constantly interact forming a large network where changes in one area affect the others.”

Planetary boundary science was pioneered in 2009 by Johan Rockstrom, the director of the PIK, and others. In that research and two subsequent reports, the researchers identified and quantified boundaries relating to climate change, biosphere, land system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, ozone layer depletion and the introduction of novel entities, such as synthetic chemicals, to the environment.

The transgression of boundaries in each of those areas risks disrupting the stability, resilience and liveability of the state of the planet that has persisted for the past 12,000 years and that has allowed the rise of complex human civilisation.

The report, which came a year after the last, is the first of what will now be annual “planetary health checks” published by PIK, Rockstrom said.

“We recognise that the planet’s health … is at such risk today that we in science must also now step up and step right out in to the uncomfortable zone and say that we are now committing ourselves to produce every year a scientific measuring of the entire health assessment – a risk assessment – across all the planetary boundaries,” he said. “This is much more than science, this is science for change.”

Unlike previous iterations of PIK’s planetary boundaries research, the report does not appear in an academic journal but is instead written and formatted for a popular audience. Rockstrom and his colleagues said the findings were based on peer-reviewed science.

Press release

The AWI's citizen science project "Microplastic Detectives" has analyzed 2.2 tons of sand from German coasts for microplastics
[25. September 2024]

The global production of plastics and the resulting plastic waste has increased to such an extent that plastics have become ubiquitous in our environment. Plastics of various sizes are also found along the German North Sea and Baltic coasts. Previous studies of microplastic pollution on German beaches have often been limited to a few locations. In the citizen science project “Microplastic Detectives”, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, together with citizens, have now collected samples from beaches along the entire German coast to be analyzed for microplastics. The resulting dataset is the first to be large enough to make reliable estimates of the state of pollution along the entire German coastline. The team is publishing its findings in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.

Global plastics production could almost triple by 2060, according to estimates by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This leads to more plastic waste and a build-up of plastic in water bodies, where it breaks down into microplastics - particles smaller than or equal to five millimeters. “This irreversible plastic pollution is affecting species, populations and ecosystems, including along the German coast,” says Dr Bruno Walther, formerly of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), now at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and lead author of the recently published study.

The extent to which our beaches in the North Sea and Baltic Sea are polluted has so far only been assessed for individual areas or locations, but not for the entire German coast. “This is why we launched the citizen research project 'Microplastic Detectives' to collect comparable data on the large-scale distribution of microplastic pollution along the German coastline.”

With the help of citizen scientists, the research team was able to collect a total of 2.2 tons of sand from 71 locations along the German coast, covering a total area of 68.36 square meters. “We have combined a total of 1139 comparable samples into one large dataset. That's more geographic coverage than we’ve ever had before,” says co-author and AWI biologist Dr Melanie Bergmann. The samples were then dried at the AWI, sieved and analyzed under a microscope for plastic particles as small as one millimeter in size. “In this study, we deliberately focused on large microplastics in order to rule out airborne contamination with small microplastic particles and to simplify sampling for the citizen scientists.”

The results were surprising: “Although we found plastic on 52 out of 71 beaches, the amount of large microplastics in the North Sea and Baltic Seas was lower than in other studies,” explains Bruno Walther. “If we had also analyzed smaller microplastic particles, we would certainly have found much higher concentrations,” adds Melanie Bergmann.

In previous AWI studies in the North Sea and the Arctic, microplastics smaller than one millimeter accounted for over 90 per cent of the microplastics found in sediments. “We also randomly selected sampling sites on the beach, rather than focusing on accumulation areas such as drift lines.” This may also explain differences.

Of the 1139 samples analyzed, 177 contained a total of 260 plastic particles. This is an average of about four plastic particles per square meter. On a ten-hectare beach, that would be 400,000 plastic particles. However, the analysis also shows that microplastic pollution varies greatly from place to place.

How effective are policies, and where do policies need to be re-adjusted?

“Our study is the first to provide comparable data on the large-scale distribution of plastic pollution along the entire German coast using standardized methods,” emphasizes Melanie Bergmann. This is necessary, for instance, to be able to map the status quo against the success of future policies to limit plastic pollution. For example, monitoring results suggest that legislative changes may have led to fewer plastic bags being found on the seafloor in north-west Europe over the past 25 years.

“But we need stronger, science-based policies that set binding rules on how we avoid, reduce and recycle plastics.” This would include measures to limit the production and use of plastics to essential applications, to ban hazardous ingredients, to increase degradability in nature and thereby enable the circular use of fewer resources.

“Microplastic Detectives” also shows that monitoring programs that involve citizens to collect comprehensive and timely data collection are successful. Interest in supporting science to tackle plastic pollution is huge: “We were surprised by the number of citizen scientists who enthusiastically spent several hours on the beach, diligently collecting, packing and sending samples. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks for this,” says Bruno Walther. “The ideal outcome of our project would be, to use it as a blueprint for long-term and even more intensive monitoring of microplastics pollution on German beaches,” adds Melanie Bergmann. “This is the only way we can review and adapt the measures we urgently need to turn the tide on plastics and their negative impacts on our coastal environment, tourism and human health.” The “Microplastic Detectives” project has now come to an end. However, citizens can still get involved in campaigns such as the Plastic Pirates citizen science project, which has school children collecting data on plastic pollution on coasts and rivers.

When diplomats struck a deal to save nature in 2022, pledging to halt biodiversity loss by the end of the decade, Europe was seen as a credible leader in fraught negotiations. The EU cajoled others into stepping up their game as it championed a target to protect 30% of the land and sea by 2030.

But two years later, as delegates meet in wildlife-rich Colombia for Cop16 – the international summit to save nature – Europe’s own enthusiasm for saving species appears to be endangered.

EU leaders scaled back plans to cut pollution and protect habitats after angry protests from farmers at the start of the year. A law to restore nature was turned into a political punching bag, barely securing majorities in key votes to rubber-stamp the deal, and a regulation to reduce deforestation will be delayed by a year, the commission announced last week.

The backsliding has alarmed conservationists and scientists, who fear that biodiversity loss is being pushed to the sidelines on the eve of the world’s most significant nature negotiations.

Guy Pe’er, an ecologist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, said the new line on nature was “exceptionally worrying” because the EU was perceived as a leader. “If other areas of the world take the same line, this can put us at a global risk of accelerating losses,” he said.

The most vocal opponents of Europe’s nature protection plans are far-right parties, which completely oppose the EU’s “green deal”, and centre-right parties, which nominally back the project but have repeatedly tried to weaken it. Both groups gained seats at the expense of the Greens in European parliament elections in June, in a rightward shift that has been echoed in national and regional elections across the continent.

EU member states agreed to downgrade protection of wolves in September, drawing criticism from conservationists who say it sends a “shameful signal” in the run-up to the summit. The move came shortly after Ursula von der Leyen, the returning commission president, announced her top team, with a shift in rhetoric that emphasised economic growth over the green agenda that characterised her previous term.

Pe’er said: “Instead of resilience, sustainability and planetary boundaries – not to speak of nature or biodiversity – we now hear the words competitiveness, boosting our economy, and helping the industry.

“This is not a small change to the tone of the green deal,” he said, “but rather a fundamental alteration of the underlying philosophy.”

Europe’s recent efforts to protect nature have been mixed. The EU failed to meet its 2020 biodiversity targets and risks falling short of its 2030 protection targets, too. In 2021, most of its member countries failed to pay their fair share of a $20bn (£15.3bn) a year commitment to protect nature, according to an analysis from the ODI in June.

Just eight of the 27 member states have revised their national biodiversity strategies and action plans, and only the same number have submitted pledges to protect nature.

In June, however, the EU passed a landmark law to restore nature, rather than just protect it. It has also pushed through contested environmental rules on deforestation and sustainable supply chains – albeit in watered-down forms – to force action in countries from which it imports food and goods.

Guido Broekhoven, a policy researcher at WWF, which recently released a tracker of national biodiversity strategies, said: “Other countries keep a close eye on its developments because ambitious action by the EU has a knock-on effect elsewhere.

“Passing the nature restoration law was a step in the right direction, but it’s the implementation that really matters now,” he said. “The increasing pressure to delay implementation of the deforestation regulation, or worse, is also concerning.”

Europe’s willingness to pay for nature protection abroad could also suffer from the rise of parties railing against migration and foreign aid. The Global Biodiversity Framework estimates an extra $700bn a year in biodiversity financing is needed between now and 2030 – 35 times more than what rich countries have promised poor ones.

Špela Bandelj Ruiz, a Greenpeace biodiversity campaigner, said: “The last UN biodiversity summit got a good deal on paper, but this must be followed with action to protect Indigenous people’s rights, restore destroyed nature and finance all this fairly.”

Nature is declining at unprecedented rates as the extinction of species accelerates, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ipbes) found in a scientific assessment in 2019. Although the biodiversity crisis does not receive the same attention and funding as climate breakdown, it has risen on the geopolitical agenda in recent years, allowing delegates to secure a significant global agreement in 2022 to stem biodiversity loss.

David Obura, chair of Ipbes, said the forthcoming Cop16 summit would be the “first milestone” since then to agree on how to assess progress towards meeting the 2030 targets. It would also be an important space to share information on commitments, implementation and “gaps that urgently need to be filled” to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity.

Campaigners have warned of the growing threat to nature protection from far-right parties, which scored big wins in Austria’s recent election and performed well in three German states last month, but also warned politicians from elsewhere against aping their rhetoric.

“We need healthy nature to have a hope for a safe future and resilient societies,” said Bandelj Ruiz. “Politicians from anywhere on the spectrum must recognise that they have a responsibility to protect their citizens and leave a livable planet for future generations.”

Abstract
Plastic is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant, resulting in widespread exposure across terrestrial and marine spaces. In the environment, plastics can degrade into microparticles where exposure has been documented in a variety of fauna at all trophic levels. Human epidemiological studies have found relationships between inhaled microplastics and oxidative stress and inflammation. Previous studies of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have reported prevalent exposure to plasticizing chemicals (e.g., phthalates) as well as particle loads in gastrointestinal tracts, but exposure from inhalation has not yet been studied. The objective of this study was to determine if inhalation is a viable route of microplastic exposure for free-ranging dolphins. Exhalation samples were opportunistically collected from dolphins residing in Sarasota Bay, Florida (n = 5) and Barataria Bay, Louisiana (n = 6) during catch-and-release health assessments to screen for microplastic particles. All dolphin samples contained at least one suspected microplastic particle, and polymer composition was determined for 100% of a subset (n = 17) of samples. Additional studies are warranted to better understand the extent of inhaled microplastics, as well as to explore impacts, given potential risks to lung function and health.

A new study published in Science reveals that human-driven extinctions of hundreds of bird species over the past 130,000 years have significantly reduced avian functional diversity — the variety of roles birds play in ecosystems — and led to the loss of around 3 billion years of unique evolutionary history.

Whilst humans have been driving a global erosion of species richness for millennia, the consequences of past extinctions for other dimensions of biodiversity are poorly known. New research led by the University of Birmingham highlights the severe consequences of the ongoing biodiversity crisis and the urgent need to identify the ecological functions being lost through extinction.

Well-Known Bird Extinctions and Their Broader Impact

From the well-documented Dodo to the recent Kauaʻi ʻōʻō songbird declared extinct in 2023, scientists currently have evidence of at least 600 bird species having become extinct as a result of humans since the Late Pleistocene when modern humans started to spread throughout the world. Using the most comprehensive dataset to date of all known bird extinctions during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, the paper ‘The global loss of avian functional and phylogenetic diversity from anthropogenic extinctions’ looks beyond the number of extinctions to the wider implications on the planet.

The Kaua’i stilt owl painting shows the island of Kaua’i in Hawaii. All three depicted species have been driven extinct by humans (the Kaua’i stilt owl, wahi grosbeak, Kauaʻi ʻōʻō). Credit: Palaeontological Artist & Avian Palaeontologist Julian P. Hume

Lead author Dr Tom Matthews from the University of Birmingham explained: “The sheer number of bird species that have become extinct is of course a big part of the extinction crisis but what we also need to focus on is that every species has a job or function within the environment and therefore plays a really important role in its ecosystem. Some birds control pests by eating insects, scavenger birds recycle dead matter, others eat fruit and disperse the seeds enabling more plants and trees to grow, and some, like hummingbirds, are very important pollinators. When those species die out, the important role that they play (the functional diversity) dies with them.

“In addition to functional diversity each species also carries a certain amount of evolutionary history, therefore when that species becomes extinct, it’s basically like chopping off a branch of the tree of life, and all of that associated phylogenetic diversity is also lost.”

The Consequences of Extinction for Ecosystems

The research found that the scale of anthropologenic bird extinctions to date has resulted in a loss of approximately 3 billion years of unique evolutionary history, and 7% of global avian functional diversity – a significantly larger amount than expected based on the number of extinctions. Given the wide range of important ecological roles performed by birds, the loss of avian functional diversity in particular will likely have had far-reaching implications. These post-extinction aftershocks include reduced flower pollination, reduced seed dispersal, the breakdown of top-down control of insect populations – including many pests and disease vectors – as well as increased disease outbreaks due to reduced consumption of carrion. In addition, the downsizing of the global avifauna documented in the research will likely affect the ability of many plant species to track present and future climate change.

Dr Matthews concludes: “These results are a timely reminder that the current extinction crisis is not just about species numbers. By identifying declines in avian functional and phylogenetic diversity driven by human actions, our findings highlight the urgent need to understand and predict the impacts of past anthropogenic extinctions on ecosystem function in order to prepare for the magnitude of expected future loss from the projected 1,000 bird species that are expected to die out completely over the next two centuries. This information is vital for setting effective targets for global conservation strategies, as well as ecosystem restoration and rewilding efforts.”