News

Marine Friendly Bioplastics Assessment Scheme

published by cgomez on Mon, 20/01/2025 - 19:21

Problem	Solution
Conventional plastics accumulate in the environment because they are not biodegradable causing an aesthetical nuisance.	Produce polymers that biodegrade in environmental compartments: potentially biodegradable plastics.
Marine fauna may potentially get entangled in plastics and accidentally ingest them, blocking their digestive tract.	Produce plastic materials that mechanically degrade in the environment, and thus do not trap or block fauna.
The degradation of plastics must not release toxic chemicals or persistent micro or nanoplastics.	Use functional additives and degradable materials identified as innocuous in a priori Ecological Risk Assessment.

marine_friendly_bioplastics.pdf

The Iberdrola fake news

published by cgomez on Mon, 08/07/2024 - 10:49

Yesterday morning I was startled by the Iberdrola advertisement broadcast on the radio program with the highest audience in Spain. Apparently, five giant plastic garbage islands in the middle of the oceans add up to an area I don't know how many times larger than Australia. Today I expected Iberdrola to announce the discovery of an elasmosaur in Loch Ness, no way. The fact that such a powerful company spreads a hoax of that calibre makes me understand the reaction of some people in the audience when I give a talk about this. If Iberdrola says it, it must be true, right? No, it is absolutely false. read more

"Greenwashing"

published by cgomez on Mon, 10/06/2024 - 13:16

Greenwashing is a commercial practice that parasitizes the consumer's growing awareness of respect for the natural environment, and their concern to preserve and improve its condition. It consists of using terms and labels that evoke ecology without actually having a solid technical basis for those products that makes them environmentally preferable to conventional ones.

Pellets from the Toconao spill do not prevent the development of sea urchin larvae

published by cgomez on Tue, 23/01/2024 - 21:59

Although we are used to thinking of mussels, limpets or sea urchins as animals that live stuck to rocks and have little ability to move, the populations of these and many other marine invertebrates are dispersed thanks to their larval stages that live in the plankton and can travel hundreds of miles swept by the currents. The sea urchin larva has a funny Eiffel Tower shape and is called a pluteus larva. In these stages, these animals are much more sensitive to pollution than adults, and for this reason, they are used as models in marine ecotoxicology.

We incubated the urchin larvae in leachates (aqueous extracts) of Toconao pellets. We have just seen the results and as the photo illustrates the larvae exposed to the leachates (on the left) are almost as large as those incubated in clean water (on the right). Good news for our coasts. We are currently going to start tests with other organisms because we need to check the effects of the pellets on other important groups such as crustaceans, algae and fish.

New substances appear in the pellets from the Toconao spill

published by cgomez on Fri, 12/01/2024 - 11:38

A second report made public by the Xunta de Galicia includes information from migration studies, which detect two new synthetic chemical substances: a phenolic antioxidant commercially called Irganox-1010 (CAS 6683-19-8) with chronic aquatic toxicity level 3 (on a scale from 1 to 4 where 1 is the highest), and an organophosphate antioxidant (CAS 31570-04-4) called Irganox-168. read more

Chemical composition of pellets spilled in Galicia

published by cgomez on Wed, 10/01/2024 - 11:06

additive UV622 structure

According to a brief report released on January 9 by the Xunta de Galicia, the pellets that were spilled last December 8 from the Liberian-flagged ship Toconao in bags labeled "UV9000 light stabilizer" imported by Bedeko Europe and manufactured in India by the Coraplast company (yes, much of the plastic consumed in Europe is produced in Asia) have the following composition. rear more

Disposable paper cups, solution or an issue?

published by flaranjeiro on Mon, 16/10/2023 - 12:41

With the anti-plastic fever, bars and vending machines have replaced single-use polypropylene cups, restricted by the EU SUP Directive, with cardboard cups, also single-use, not included in the Directive. The point is that cardboard, unlike plastic, is not impermeable to liquids and therefore to be used as a glass it needs to be lined inside with a sheet that makes it waterproof, and do you know what this sheet is made of? read more