Page - 278 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

incineration is correlated with respiratory illness and cancer clusters among the populations that live near them [66]. While this book aims to understand the impacts of freshwater microplastics, in this chapter we aim to understand and include the upstream social costs in our assessment of the sources and true costs associatedwithmicro- andnanoplastics. 3 Downstream(OceanRecovery)VersusUpstream Intervention Thenwheredoouractions toprevent thepotential of irreversibleharmbegin?The three research themes (global distribution, toxicity, marine life impacts) guide mitigationupstream, but it did not begin thatway. The sensationalized mythology of trash islands and garbage patches that had dominated thepublic conversationaboutplasticmarinepollution in themid-2000s invoked well-intentioned schemes to recover plastic from the ocean gyres, like giant floating nets to capture debris and plastic-to-fuel pyrolysis machines on ocean-going barges, to seeding the seaswith bacteria that consumePET, polyeth- ylene, and polypropylene (which, if this could work, would have the unintended consequenceof consumingfishingnets, buoys, docks, andboat hulls).All of these schemes fail on several fronts: economics of cost-benefit, minimizing ecological impacts, and design and testing in real ocean conditions [67]. Recent analysis of debris hot spots and currentmodeling support the case for nearshore and riverine collection rather thanmid-ocean cleanup [68]. This begs the question, “What shouldbe done aboutwhat is out there now?” If wedonothing, the likely endgame formicroplastic is sedimentationon shore [14] or the seafloor [16], as a dynamic ocean ejects floating debris. Consider the precedent of how tar balls plagued the open ocean and shorelines untilMARPOL AnnexV stopped oil tankers from rinsing their ship hulls of petroleum residue to the sea in themid-1980s.A relatively rapid reduction in tar ball observations soon followed [69]. Though we will live with a defining stratigraphy of micro- and nanoplastic in sediments worldwide [70], the ocean can recover if we stop doing moreharm. Still,whatcanbedoneaboutmacrodebris? In the2015G7meeting inGermany, Fishing for Litter was presented as the only viable ocean cleanup program, and describedas“auseful lastoptioninthehierarchy,butcanonlyaddresscertain types of marine litter” [71]. While Fishing for Litter campaigns can be effective at capturing largepersistentdebris, likefishingnets,buoys,buckets, andcratesbefore they fragment further, like theKIMOInternational efforts inNorthSeaandaround Scotland [72], theydonot address the source. 278 M.Eriksen et al.