SAN ANTONIO – Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that banned the use of paper straws.
Whether you use paper or plastic products — what happens to them when you throw them away?
Andre Felton is a UTSA doctoral student who studies microplastics.
Felton said paper straws can naturally break down over time, but the same cannot be said for plastic products.
“That’s what biodegradable means that we can break down items, food items or drink items into these categories that then we use and every organism we use to rebuild and maintain their bodies,” Felton said. “That’s what we mean when it’s not biodegradable, that no organism is able to really break that down and return those things to the environment for everyone to use again.”
At this point, Felton said, there is no known way to safely get rid of plastics.
“They are created, manufactured in a way that is highly unnatural in its chemistry, which makes it both a very good substance for us to use in society because it’s very durable, but that also comes with the counter of it not being able to biodegrade because there’s no readily available enzyme by organisms to break apart those bonds that we forced together in making what’s called a plastic,” Felton said.
What happens when we throw away plastic products?
Felton said plastics turn into microplastics and end up in our soils, plants, animals and waterways. It performs its own life cycle.
“Why all that matters is some of that, that sitting there will be pulled up into the atmosphere,” Felton said. “And as you see, these arrows here can be pulled up by the wind by rain, by storms, by gusts, so many other things. Even from our road tires, right? As it gets into the air, it now starts to become a factor that can affect our weather.”
Felton said these microplastics are impacting our weather as well as climate change through this cycle.
Plastics’ impact on health
According to Felton, these microplastics don’t break down before we ingest them and get stuck to fat components in our bodies.
After they are ingested, microplastics can cause cardiovascular issues, hormonal imbalances and build up in our brains.
“If you think that fat molecules that are attaching to it in the blood would also have an impact, then it would make sense that they would be disproportionately found in our brain, which is mostly fat,” Felton said. “And so the question is, ‘What would that have on psychology? What would that have on our mental stability and our behavior? What does that have in the long term?’”
Combating plastics’ health impact
Enzymes
According to Felton, research over the last five to 10 years indicated some microbial organisms and fungi are developing enzymes to break down microplastics.
“But none of them can do it at a scale that we need,” Felton said.
Recapture
The second method Felton suggested could benefit humans is recapturing the microplastics in the environment.
“We can do that from our own neighborhoods, actually separating our plastic from every other recyclable, right? We can do that at a city level, so city ordinances or infrastructure to actually pull plastic,” Felton said. “And then we can do that at a federal level where we take all of those and funnel them into these systems of breaking them down and returning it. Those would be the biggest challenges, and there’s research on how we can be better at recapturing.”
What can we do?
Felton said the most practical way to combat plastics’ impact on our health is by reducing our dependency on single-use plastics.
“That is honestly the greatest contributor to plastic pollution. Greater than 60% of all plastics created are instantly made to only be used once, and then they go into the environment,” Felton said. “The plastic straws is a great example. No one’s walking around with a plastic straw in their pocket that they used to drink from everything that they have, right? We use a straw; we toss it. We use a plastic cup; we toss it. A lot of our issues with the plastic issue is that their single use.”
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