The " Dark Side " of Plastic !

Have you noticed that brushing your teeth each morning now feels slightly " different  ?    The toothpaste you use lacks that foamy abrasiveness that washed away the overnight " gunk " that delivers "morning breath " and polishes your smile.   There is also something different about the soap when you step into the shower.   As it ages the bar of soap tends to feel " dry " and reluctant to deliver a healthy lather.

The reason is because the manufactures have been forced by government edict to remove the tiny rough balls of plastic that delivered the abrasive content to soap, toothpaste and all those laundry products that needed them to expel grime.  They were a by-product of the oil industry and were considered harmless, until we discovered that they were entering the food chain and ending up in human bodies.

They are called " nurdles " and consist of tiny plastic pellets that wash away when we shower or rinse away toothpaste and eventually they find their way to the oceans.  Examined under a microscope they appear transparent, similar to baby teeth and they are the raw material used in almost all plastic products.  When they form part of any detergent their residue is washed away with water and so they begin their journey to the world's oceans.

The fact that they are so tiny caused us to think they were harmless, but at the bottom of the food chain are tiny microscopic creatures that see them as food and ingest them.   In the course of the food cycle, these tiny creatures become a meal for something a bit larger, and that process continues until these nurdles find their way into fish and prawns which we - as the ultimate predators of the food chain - include in our diet.

Along the way, nurdles are indigestible when they enter the food chain of birds, turtles and a whole range of creatures that find them lowering their stomach capacity and causing them to starve.  They are the reason many animal species have lower numbers to the point of becoming extinct.   Fortunately, we humans have an extended life expectancy, but we are finding that these nurdles are being absorbed into the tissue of our bodies and may eventually have a detrimental effect to our health.

We thought we had the situation under control with the filtering process that processed the water discharged from sewage treatment plants trapping nurdles but they are continuing to appear in the water near our beaches.  The government has ordered their elimination or reduction in cleansing products and a higher intensity screening in discharge procedures at water plants, but the long term effect on the human body is yet to be fully measured.

We have to find a harmless substitute to this oil industry by-product. Less effective soap and toothpaste is the price we have to pay to reduce extinction in the animal kingdom and guard against the long term effects of their absorption into the human body.  Unfortunately, in the decades we have relied on oil to power industry, much of the damage has already been done !