THE USE of washing machines is contaminating the world’s shorelines, according to new research.
The problem isn’t dumped white goods or phosphates however but tiny bits of plastic from synthetic-fibre clothing.
Dr Mark Anthony Browne, an ecologist in University College Dublin’s school of biology and environmental science, headed a team of scientists who scoured shorelines around the world looking for proof of “microplastic”. The tiny bits of plastic are smaller than the head of a pin.
They can arise when plastic waste at sea gets churned and broken up, he said. The main source of microplastic contamination, however, is fibres. A single piece of acrylic clothing can shed more than 1,900 fibres during a machine wash and fibres from all sorts of synthetic fabrics represent the main source of microplastic pollution found on beaches around the world, Dr Browne said.
People only recognise problems associated with big pieces of plastic at sea affecting big iconic animals like dolphins or whales, but plastic fibres are a known health hazard and are associated with cancers, he said. They have been shown to pass through the stomach and into cells.
“The smaller the particles get the more they transfer over,” he said. “The medical evidence says we should be worried about it.”
He and colleagues in Canada, the UK and Australia had the unenviable job of examining sewage sludge disposal sites and effluent from sewage treatment plants. They also did test loads of washing to count fibres coming out of a typical domestic washing machine.
Details of the work were published online recently in the US journal Environmental Science and Technology.
“We are really at the start of studying the invertebrates that form the base of the food chain,” he said. Microplastic could already be accumulating in lower species and could be having an unknown impact on higher organisms.
“As the human population grows and people use more synthetic textiles, contamination of habitats and animals by microplastic is likely to increase,” Dr Browne said.