Það er ótrúlegt en satt en yfirvöld heimila sjókvíaeldisfyrirtækjunum að losa gríðarlegt magn af plasti í hafið frá starfsemi sinni.
Meira eða minna allur búnaður sem notaður er við opið sjókvíaeldi á laxi er úr plasti. Netin, flothringirnir, festingarnar og fóðurrörin. Plaströrin eru margir kílómetrar við hvert eldissvæði. Um þau er blásið hörðum fóðurkögglum út í kvíarnar. Þetta virkar einsog sandblástur og feikilegt magn af örplasti berst í sjóinn. Og auðvitað með fóðrinu í eldislaxinn líka.
Álagið á rörin er mikið og þau þynnast svo hratt að skipta þarf um þau á um það bil átján mánaða fresti.
Einsog kemur fram í greininni sem hér fylgir er plastmengun ein mesta heilsufarsógn okkar daga. Börn eru í sérstökum áhættuflokki.
Af hverju fær þetta að viðgangast? Svarið er að stjórnmálamenn sem sinntu hagsmunagæslu fyrir sjókvíaeldið á Alþingi sáu til þess að tekin voru úr sambandi lög um varnir gegn mengun hafs og stranda sem gilda um alla aðra starfsemi og atvinnurekstur. Sérlög smíðuð fyrir þennan mengandi iðnað. Það voru alvarleg mistök sem hljóta að verða leiðrétt.
Við mælum með góðri umfjöllun The Guardian um plastmengunarkrísuna.
Plastics are a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger” to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. The world is in a “plastics crisis”, it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5tn (£1.1tn) a year in health-related damages.
…Petrostates and the plastics industry have argued the focus should be on recycling plastic, not cutting production. But, unlike paper, glass, steel and aluminium, chemically complex plastics cannot be readily recycled. The report said: “It is now clear that the world cannot recycle its way out of the plastic pollution crisis.”
More than 98% of plastics are made from fossil oil, gas and coal. The energy-intensive production process drives the climate crisis by releasing the equivalent of 2bn tonnes of CO2 a year – more than the emissions of Russia, the world’s fourth biggest polluter. Plastic production also produces air pollution, while more than half of unmanaged plastic waste was burned in the open air, further increasing dirty air, the report noted.
skip past newsletter promotionMore than 16,000 chemicals are used in plastics, including fillers, dyes, flame retardants and stabilisers. Many plastic chemicals were linked to health effects at all stages of human life, the report said, but there was a lack of transparency about which chemicals were present in plastics.
The analysis found that foetuses, infants and young children were highly susceptible to the harms associated with plastics, with exposure associated with increased risks of miscarriage, premature and stillbirth, birth defects, impaired lung growth, childhood cancer and fertility problems later in life.
Plastic waste often breaks down into micro- and nano-plastics which enter the human body via water, food and breathing. The particles have been found in blood, brains, breast milk, placentas, semen and bone marrow. Their impact on human health is largely unknown as yet, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks and the researchers said a precautionary approach was needed. …