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Over 50 trillion MPs were estimated as merely the floating stock in the ocean in 2017. Plastics are persistent and do not mineralize in an observable timescale, especially in the ocean. The threat of microplastics in the ocean persists beyond the present generation as their levels will keep increasing in future years and their ecological effects are likely to be irreversible. Available data show bioaccumulation of microplastics in several species and biomagnification by predation, while moving along the marine food web to reach the human consumer. For instance, some bivalves as well as commercial fish species are already reported to be contaminated with microplastics. That only two to three microplastics (discernible by eye or low power microscope) are found in a sample of fish or seafood species is not reassuring, because the fish could have been ingesting that amount of microplastics routinely and potentially bioaccumulating POPs sorbed by these in its tissue.
Their growing abundance indicated by an expanding body of research findings on microplastics in the ocean raises the question of their wider impacts on the ecosystem as a whole. Has the impact of microplatics now evolved beyond that of a mere pollutant, challenging planetary sustainability to exert a systemic influence on Earth’s resilience? While they do not satisfy all criteria presently used to qualify as a planetary boundary threat, some have suggested that they would be a serious candidate phenomenon. There are, of course, many unknowns and the research that would address these gaps in knowledge needs to be undertaken without delay. The magnitude of microplastic‐related impacts at the population level and how seriously they might impact the functioning of the physical and biological cycles in the ocean, remain unclear. So is the ingestion‐related distress across the spectrum of marine organisms. Valid methodologies to allow decisions making despite these limitations need to be developed. Inadequate funding, especially in the US, to study such impacts especially at global hot‐spots for plastic pollution, holds back this important task. Of the reviews on the topic published over the last few years, less than half are by scientists in Asia, the prime hotspot for plastic pollution. Also, a great majority of the research reports tend to be qualitative and the scarcity of relevant hard numbers to gauge the impacts, impedes this assessment.
Plastics in the ocean is a serious man‐made problem that affects the present as well as future generations. A few decades from now, it may assume proportions that complicate or even defy any reasonable efforts at mitigation or containment. That the threat of plastic pollution of the ocean environment is serious and its effects irreversible are well established. Consistent with the precautionary principle, despite the scientific uncertainty of their full impact, adopting measures to curb the problem is prudent.
Anthony L. Andrady
Apex, NC 27523
Foreword
Charles James Moore
Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research, 160 N. Marina Drive, Long Beach, CA, USA
As I began writing this Foreword in the waning days of 2020, the media was replete with reviews of the year soon to be thankfully gone. Besides 2020 being one long battle against COVID‐19, the narrator of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s (CBS) year in review made the following statement: “2020 was the year the plastic pollution problem got the world’s attention.” Apparently, the problem was baking in the world oven for a good half‐century and finally came out in a form that caught “the world’s attention.” For those of us working for decades to draw back the plastic curtain of ignorance that has kept the public from a general understanding of the material that characterizes the modern era, this was a belated yet welcome assertion.
The study of marine plastics arose before plastics were acknowledged to be problematic for the ocean. At first, marine scientists were simply noting that plastics had been found in birds and on the sea surface and were unsure of what this meant. The problematic nature of synthetic polymers in our water world could have been inferred from the fact there is no background or natural level of these persistent anthropogenic compounds anywhere. This makes them a priori a pollutant; they do not belong in or to any natural system. Small amounts of synthetic polymers in the environment might have been ignored by science, but the quantities rapidly increased and became impossible to ignore. Sadly, it is because of plastic pollution that we study ocean plastics. In this volume, an esteemed publisher of scientific literature and a world‐renowned expert on environmental plastics have teamed up to give you widely varied perspectives that together demonstrate clearly that marine plastic pollution its own field of science. If science can be characterized as a branch of knowledge that provides answers by carefully studying a phenomenon from as many areas of expertise as possible, then the study of plastic pollution of the marine environment has surely become its own field of scientific inquiry. For a deep and broad understanding of the issues surrounding ocean plastics, Wiley could not have found a better editor for this volume than Dr. Anthony Andrady. His 2003 volume Plastics and the Environment, was the most comprehensive treatment of the subject ever written with contributions from twenty‐two authors.
No scientists are exempt from the world views known as paradigms that reign in their historical milieu. Scientists are slow to acknowledge the need for a completely new field of research, and academic institutions and their funders are slow to divert resources to a new scientific discipline, so it has taken over half a century to create awareness and a consensus so that institutions can seek and give funding that opens wide the doors to plastic pollution research. The production of 1000’s of peer‐reviewed studies and several textbooks over the last quarter‐century is strong evidence that plastics and the ocean are now linked in a novel, though highly undesirable marriage for the foreseeable future; an unhappy union whose dissolution will be messy and unknowably prolonged. A world polluted by plastic is indeed a new world, and its discovery and elucidation could be described as a scientific revolution.
Thomas Kuhn stated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, “Though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world…” May we not take exception to this dictum in the case of plastic pollution? The world has changed, since its water, air and soil, as well as the space around it, are infected with synthetic polymers never before seen in its long history. The contemporary scientific paradigm is an anthropogenic one, and the modern scientist works in a world, in many ways, made by humans.
The field of marine plastic research may conveniently be divided into three chronological phases:
1 The Discovery Phase, 1960–1999, when the phenomenon of ocean plastic was first reported and confirmed.
2 The Consolidation Phase, 2000–2014, when ocean plastic research produced considerable quan‐ titative data and highlighted areas of concern, mainly entanglement and ingestion. Other areas considered collateral were aesthetics, increasing international production of plastic consumer goods leading to increasing ocean plastics, biofouling, three‐dimensional movement in the water column, transport of exotics and effects on the health of marine species.
3 The Rapid Growth Phase, 2015‐present, when large institutions and governmental organizations began to see ocean plastics as worthy of high‐level research and remedial action, and nongovernmental organizations focusing on plastic pollution worldwide.
The dawn of the Age of Plastic can be traced to its increased development and use in WWII. During the Pax Americana that followed, synthetic polymers spread rapidly from wartime to peacetime consumer and industrial applications. The famous LIFE Magazine article entitled “Throwaway Living,” made single‐use foodservice “modern” in 1955, but never addressed the after‐ life of the items thrown away. Away was far, not near. After three decades of this growing single‐use lifestyle, the public became aware of problems with finding a faraway place for waste. This was highlighted by the long but circular voyage of the barge Mobro 4000 from New York to Belize and back, when despite repeated attempts, no U. S. state, territory, or foreign country would accept 3000 tons of New York’s garbage. Upon the barge’s return to New York, symbolizing a very expensive and failed attempt to find “away,” the refuse was burned and the ash buried in a landfill. To this day, many forms of burning and burying continue to dominate plastic disposal, both of which are polluting