State of the Oceans — Log 97

Aug 29

YOUR WEEKLY BRIEFING FROM PARLEY

THE TOXIC AGE

In the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, which made landfall in Louisiana and Texas this week, residents are being warned to shelter in place and close doors and windows due to a toxic and extremely dangerous chemical leak at a sprawling plant that makes toxic household cleaners. BioLab’s Lake Charles plant was built in 1979 and manufactures chemicals used in such household cleaners like bleach scrub. Both trichloroisocyanuric acid and chlorine are potentially acutely toxic to people and animals if ingested or inhaled. The stretch of Gulf coast where the hurricane made landfall is lined with petrochemical operations, plastic ‘cracking’ plants and other facilities – a visceral reminder of the links between the petrochemical industry, the plastics industry and the toxic (and often totally unnecessary) chemicals we’ve grown used to in our daily lives.

Even facilities that weren’t damaged in the storm are causing massive damage to the environment. A refinery owned by Natgasoline in Beaumont, Texas, said it released 1,750 tons of carbon dioxide in its restart after being spared by the powerful storm, which made landfall about 30 miles away. Huge emission surges like this come from simply stopping and restarting petrochemical plants to defend against dangerous storms. In Port Arthur, Texas, another plant released nearly 90 tons of emissions, including a half ton of cancer-causing benzene and 8.7 tons of planet-warming nitrous oxide. Experts also expect to see a surge of pollutants dumped during the rebooting of chemical plants that were deactivated in the region.

GLOBAL HEATING

Our planet has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years – and ‘stunned’ scientists say there is little doubt global heating is to blame for the loss. The level of ice loss revealed by the group matches the worst-case-scenario predictions outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is so vast it would cover the entire surface of the UK with a sheet of frozen water 100 metres thick. The scientists warn that the melting of ice in these quantities is now seriously reducing the planet’s ability to reflect solar radiation back into space. Meanwhile, a growing underwater heat blob could be helping to speed the demise of Arctic sea ice – with warmer, saltier water from the Atlantic migrating upwards.

OCEAN NOISE POLLUTION

Could military sonar be responsible for an unusual series of strandings and sightings of 29 rare beaked whales around the shores of northern Europe? Earlier this summer, a major NATO anti-submarine exercise was carried out off Iceland. Although it ended on 10 July, conservationists are concerned that its after-effects may now becoming clear in the strandings of the past two weeks – with beaked whales dying in the UK, the Faroe Islands, Belgium and the Netherlands. Earlier this year, an Australian paper found a “strong association” between military exercises using anti-submarine mid-frequency active sonar and the deaths of beaked whales – the most mysterious and deepest-diving cetaceans in the oceans.

DEEP SPACE

Mysteries about our cosmic neighborhood are unraveling thanks to evidence of supernova explosions found in deep-sea sediments. Researchers explored several deep-sea sediment layers from different locations that date back 33,000 years and found clear traces of the isotope iron-60, which is formed when stars die in supernova explosions. Such findings suggest our planet has travelled through a fallout cloud from a nearby supernovae, or possibly an ‘echo’ of an earlier supernova. Separately, a team recently found that killer cosmic rays from nearby supernovae could be the culprit behind at least one mass extinction event on Earth.

PLASTIC INNOVATION

A new type of plastic may be the first that is infinitely recyclable, say researchers. The material, called PBTL, is made by joining together chemical building blocks called bicyclic thiolactones. PBTL has excellent strength, toughness and stability, and can be easily recycled by heating it at 100°C in the presence of a chemical catalyst for 24 hours. This breaks the plastic cleanly into its original building blocks, which can then be reassembled into new high-quality plastic. Separately, US researchers have discovered a new microbial pathway that produces ethylene – providing a potential avenue for biomanufacturing a common component of plastics and adhesives.