The coming Monday is Halloween. It is time to exchange candy and chocolate or enjoy festivals in costume. There's something I need to point out before playing recklessly. Participate in the Halloween festival, and you can participate in the emission of new "microplastics" that I don't know.
Microplastics are pieces of plastic less than 5 mm in diameter. In other words, it is a piece of debris caused by wear and tear of plastic goods. When clothes made of synthetic fibers are put in a washing machine or a dryer and rotated, the surface of the clothes is cut off and microplastics are generated. Pet bottles thrown away on the beach are also made when they are weathered by ultraviolet rays or waves.
Microplastics that flow into nature enter the human body through the food chain. The toxicity of microplastics on the human body is not yet clear, but the possibility has been raised that some cells in the human body are vulnerable to microplastics. For now, nerve cells are the most likely. Thanks to the cell's defense mechanism, most of the microplastics absorbed by the body are released out of the body. However, microplastics in nanometers (nm), which are one billionth of a meter (m), were observed to enter the cell. For the sake of the environment or health, microplastic emissions should be reduced for now.
Most of the packaging materials for candy and chocolate on Halloween are made of plastic. Scientific Reports, a sister magazine of the 2020 science journal Nature, published a study showing that when plastic packaging wrapped in chocolate is opened by 300cm, about 14,000 to 75,000 microplastics with mass of 0.8 to 1.4 nanograms (ng) are generated. Emissions differed slightly depending on the thickness, density, and material of the packaging material. The amount of microplastics generated by one person tearing off plastic packaging is small, but if many do the same, a considerable amount accumulates. In response, the research team said in the paper, "I should be responsible for knowing that my daily actions can affect environmental pollution caused by microplastics." Microplastics also occurred when opening plastic bottle caps or cutting tape with a knife.
Clothing worn every Halloween is also a hotbed for microplastics. This is because most of the clothes are made of synthetic fibers. Statistics show that 82.5% of the fibers that make up Halloween costumes are plastic synthetic fibers such as polyester, nylon, acrylic, and spandex. This is the result of a survey of 324 Halloween costumes distributed in H&M, Zara, eBay, and Amazon by the British charity Fairyland Trust and the charity environmental organization Hubbub in 2019. The average weight of a costume calculated for 30 Halloween costumes sold on Amazon is 361g, of which an average of 297g is plastic. After the festival, most of the Halloween costumes are thrown away. Plastic clothes don't go away because they rot. It is only broken into small pieces by microplastics.
Writer: Yeyoung Jeon
(Picture from Clubart Korea)
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