There has a been a fair bit written about health effects of the obsessive mask wearing that people are supposed to do, especially the increase in carbon dioxide that occurs. But, the real problem is with the mask itself, which is not made usually of environmentally benign material, but is a massive threat to the environment, if you care about the environment, which the Left is supposed to do. Yet, these are the creatures pushing the mask fetish. Just look at Beijing Biden and Harris, with masks as their face decoration. The only good thing about this is at least it covers a fair proportion of their faces!
“The planet may be facing a new plastic crisis, similar to the one brought on by bottled water, but this time involving discarded face masks. “Mass masking” continues to be recommended by most public health groups during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite research showing masks do not significantly reduce the incidence of infection.
As a result, it’s estimated that 129 billion face masks are used worldwide each month, which works out to about 3 million masks a minute. Most of these are the disposable variety, made from plastic microfibers.
Ranging in size from five millimeters (mm) to microscopic lengths, microplastics, which include microfibers, are being ingested by fish, plankton and other marine life, as well as the creatures on land that consume them (including humans).
More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced globally annually — and that was before mask-wearing became a daily habit. Most of it ends up as waste in the environment, leading researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University to warn that masks could quickly become “the next plastic problem.”
Why Disposable Masks May Be Even Worse Than Plastic Bottles
The bottled water crisis is now well-known as a leading source of environmental plastic pollution, but it’s slated to be outpaced by a new mask crisis. While about 25% of plastic bottles are recycled, “there is no official guidance on mask recycle, making it more likely to be disposed of as solid waste,” the researchers stated. “With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat.”
Not only are masks not being recycled, but their materials make them likely to persist and accumulate in the environment. Most disposable face masks contain three layers — a polyester outer layer, a polypropylene or polystyrene middle layer and an inner layer made of absorbent material such as cotton.
Polypropylene is already one of the most problematic plastics, as it’s widely produced and responsible for large waste accumulation in the environment, as well as being a known asthma trigger. Further, the researchers noted:
“Once in the environment, the mask is subjected to solar radiation and heat, but the degradation of polypropylene is retarded due to its high hydrophobicity, high molecular weight, lacking an active functional group, and continuous chain of repetitive methylene units. These recalcitrant properties lead to the persistence and accumulation in the environment.”
They also stated that when the masks become weathered in the environment, they can generate a large number of microsized polypropylene particles in a matter of weeks, then break down further into nanoplastics that are less than 1 mm in size.
Because masks may be directly made from microsized plastic fibers with a thickness of 1 mm to 10 mm, they may release microsized particles into the environment more readily — and faster — than larger plastic items, like plastic bags.
Further, “Such impacts can be worsened by a new-generation mask, nanomasks, which directly use nanosized plastic fibers (e.g., diameter <1 mm) and add a new source of nanoplastic pollution.” A report by OceansAsia further estimated that 1.56 billion face masks may have entered the world’s oceans in 2020, based on a global production estimate of 52 billion masks manufactured that year, and a loss rate of 3%, which is conservative.
Based on this data, and an average weight of 3 to 4 grams for a single-use polypropylene surgical mask, the masks would add 4,680 to 6,240 additional metric tons of plastic pollution to the marine environment, which, they note, “will take as long as 450 years to break down, slowly turning into microplastics while negatively impacting marine wildlife and ecosystems.”
Masks Entering Marine Environments Pose Additional Risks
Plastic particles are known to travel great distances, posing immense risks to virtually every part of the globe. Small, weathered pieces of plastic — suggesting they’d been on a long journey — have been found at the top of the Pyrénées mountains in southern France and “in the northernmost and easternmost areas of the Greenland and Barents seas.”
Calling the Greenland and Barents seas area a “dead end” for the plastic debris, researchers hypothesized that the seafloor below would be a catch-all for accumulating plastic debris. In separate research, it was also revealed that plastic pollution has reached the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica — an area believed to be mostly free of contamination. According to the featured study:
“When not properly collected and managed, masks can be transported from land into freshwater and marine environments by surface run-off, river flows, oceanic currents, wind, and animals (via entanglement or ingestion). The occurrence of waste masks has been increasingly reported in different environments and social media have shared of wildlife tangled in elastic straps of masks.”
Such plastics also contain contaminants, such as polycyclic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which may be genotoxic (i.e., causing DNA damage that could lead to cancer), along with dyes, plasticizers and other additives linked to additional toxic effects, including reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity and mutagenicity.
Aside from the chemical toxicity, ingestion of microplastics from degraded masks and other plastic waste is also toxic due to the particles themselves as well as the potential that they could carry pathogenic microorganisms.
Another issue that’s rarely talked about is the fact that when you wear a mask, tiny microfibers are released, which can cause health problems when inhaled. The risk is increased when masks are reused. This hazard was highlighted in a performance study to be published in the June 2021 issue of Journal of Hazardous Materials.
Researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong University also said scientists, manufacturers and regulators need to assess the inhalation of microplastic and nanoplastic debris shed from masks — both disposable and cloth — noting:
“… [C]omplaints of throat irritation or discomfort in the respiratory tract by children, the elderly, or other sensitive individuals after wearing these may be alerting signs of excessive amounts of respirable debris inhaled from self-made masks and respirators.”
In the featured study researchers also called on the environmental research community to “move fast to understand and mitigate these risks,” suggesting that reusable cloth masks be promoted in lieu of disposable options and that mask-only trash cans be set up to assist in proper disposal. However, another option would be to loosen or eliminate mask mandates, which may turn out to cause more harm than good.”
Masks, and their associated plastic pollution is yet another spinoff of the Covid freak-out society.