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Our toxic legacy: bushfires release decades of pollutants absorbed by forests

We know forests absorb carbon dioxide, but, like a sponge, they also soak up years of pollutants from human activity. When bushfires strike, these pollutants are re-released into the air with smoke and ash.

Republished from The Conversation by Cynthia Faye Isley and Mark Patrick Taylor

Our new research examined air samples from four major bushfires near Sydney between 1984 and 2004. We found traces of potentially toxic metals sourced from the city’s air — lead, cadmium and manganese — among the fine particles of soil and burnt vegetation in bushfire smoke.

These trace metals were associated with leaded petrol — which hasn’t been used since 2002 — and industrial emissions, which include past metal processing, fossil fuel burning, refineries, transport and power generation.

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This means bushfires, such as the those that devastated Australia last summer, can remobilise pollutants we’ve long phased out. The health and other effects may not be fully understood or realised for decades.

An infographic showing how forests soak up pollutants and then release them in fires. — How bushfires can resurrect pollutants years after they were emitted. Pb is lead, Cd is cadmium, Mn is manganese, and TSP is ‘total suspended particulates’ Author provided

Analysing air samples

We chose four major bushfires — which occurred in 1984, 1987, 2001-2002 and 2004 — because of their known impact on air quality across Sydney. The New South Wales government collected air samples every sixth day on filters over that period and archived them, which meant we could study them years later.

We analysed these air samples during the bushfire periods and compared them to the months either side of each event.

As expected, air pollution levels were higher during bushfires periods, in terms of total suspended particles and fine particles (“PM10”, which are particles 10 microns or less in size).

Using statistical analyses, we separated the source components of the particles: those from natural soils and those originating from human-sourced pollutants. We found the concentration of the human-sourced pollutant component — containing lead and cadmium — doubled during bushfire periods.

Pollution of the air with cadmium is associated with mining, refining, burning fossil fuels, and even from household wastes. But the source of lead pollution has a more complicated story.

Average levels of metals and particles in Sydney’s air before, during and after bushfires.

A story written in lead

Isotopes are variants of an element, such as lead. Different lead “isotopes” have different atomic masses.

Our study measured lead isotopes in the air samples to “fingerprint” the pollution sources.

The data show that the source of the lead ranges from natural origins derived from the weathering of rocks to those from leaded petrol emissions.

Read more: Explainer: what is an isotope?

Leaded petrol started being phased out in 1985 due to environmental and health concerns, and hasn’t been used in vehicles since 2002. Much smaller amounts are still used in AVGAS — the fuel used to power small piston aircraft engines.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

As a result, lead levels in Sydney’s air decreased dramatically from 1984 to 2004. At the same time, the lead isotopes in the air changed.

The lead used in NSW petrol predominantly came from the mines at Broken Hill. Broken Hill lead has a very different isotopic signature to the lead found in Sydney’s main bedrock, Hawkesbury Sandstone. This corresponds to previous research showing ash from Sydney trees contained Broken Hill lead.

In 1994, lead in Sydney’s air was closer to the Broken Hill lead signature. By 2004, the lead isotopes in air resembled natural Sydney rocks. But during bushfires in 2001-2002 and 2004, the lead that was released started to look more like Broken Hill lead again.

This shows that the forests had absorbed leaded petrol emissions over the 70 years it was used and stored them. When the forests went up in flames, the lead was remobilised along with smoke and other bushfire particles.

What does that mean for our health?

Breathing in bushfire smoke is a serious health risk. Bushfire smoke resulted in more than 400 excess deaths during the devastating 2019-2020 bushfires.

A huge plume of smoke coming from a forest — The concentrations of toxic metals aren’t high enough to be a health risk. Shutterstock

Recently, the focus of air quality and health research has shifted to very fine particles: “PM2.5”. These are particles 2.5 microns or smaller that can penetrate deep into our lungs. During the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020, PM2.5 levels reached 85 micrograms per cubic metre of air over 24-hours, more than three times the Australian air quality criteria of 25 micrograms per cubic metre.

While our study shows that potentially toxic metals were more elevated in the atmosphere during bushfires, the concentrations were not likely to be a health risk. The main risk is from the total concentration of fine particles in the air, rather than what they are made of.

The concentrations of the trace metals measured during the four major bushfires in our study were below Australian and World Health Organisation criteria. The period of increased exposure was also very limited, further reducing risk.

Nevertheless, it’s important to minimise exposure to all chemical contaminants. This is because many, such as lead, have no safe lower exposure limit and the effects are often proportionately greater at the first and lowest exposure levels.

A lingering legacy

It’s not just Australian forests that have a lingering toxic legacy. In Ukraine and Belarus, radioactive materials from Chernobyl have been released during bushfires.

And as global knowledge of the damaging effects of pesticides grew, we stopped using them. Yet we still find them far from civilisation in the frozen Arctic, waiting to be released when the ice melts.

Metals such as lead, copper, manganese and uranium continue to be mined and processed in Australia. The most significant environmental and health impactsare felt by the immediately surrounding communities, particularly children, as contaminants in the air deposit on surfaces and are later ingested.https://www.youtube.com/embed/zEgLPiFKVm8?wmode=transparent&start=0

Globally, the recycling of lead batteries continues to contaminate communities and environments, particularly those in low to middle income countries.

Yes, our modern lifestyles depend on these metals and other toxic chemicals. So, we must mine, use and dispose of them with great care, because once in the environment, they do not go away.

How the gut microbiome may influence the severity of COVID-19

The risk of severe COVID-19 infection is more common in those with high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, conditions that are all associated with changes to the composition of the gut microbiome — the community of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in the intestines. This raises the question of whether the gut microbiome has a role in dictating COVID-19 severity.

Republished from The Conversation

Let’s recap what we know about COVID-19. COVID-19 is a new disease caused by a very contagious virus called SARS-CoV-2.

In most infected individuals, the virus does not cause serious illness. However, it causes a very serious respiratory disease — and even death — in a minority of patients. Through many studies of people with COVID-19 over the past few months, we have learned what characteristics are more likely to be linked to mild versus severe forms of the disease.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Who is predisposed to serious COVID-19?

Children and young adults are less likely to develop symptomatic COVID-19, although infection readily occurs in young people with equally high viral loads in the airway, suggesting that they can certainly infect others. In contrast, people of older age and those with pre-existing chronic conditions are highly at risk and very likely develop symptomatic, severe disease.

If we consider the gradient of severity of the disease, children are at one end, and the elderly and patients with chronic conditions are at the other end.

What conditions are linked to severe COVID-19?

The information collected by researchers from many countries all points to similar characteristics and health conditions that are more commonly seen in patients with severe disease. These include older age, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.

The strength of these associations is even more prominent among younger individuals, as younger patients with obesity and diabetes are more likely to have serious disease.

In New York City, 5,279 patients tested positive for COVID-19 between March 1 and April 8, 2020. Of these, 22.6 per cent had diabetes and 35.3 per cent were obese.

Related: Americans are Fatter Now Than in the 1980s, Even with the Same Diet and Exercise

Obesity was associated with an increased rate of hospital admission and critical illness. Similar findings were provided by investigators in the United Kingdomabout the outbreak in Britain, where obese patients were twice as likely to develop severe disease.

Do these findings raise the possibility that the mechanisms underlying high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity may help explain why these conditions lead to severe COVID-19 disease? Before exploring this question, let’s zoom in on cellular and molecular mechanisms known to be involved in COVID-19 disease.

How does the body fight COVID-19 infection?

When the virus enters the body, it mostly goes to the airways and the gastrointestinal tract. The virus then binds to specific receptors present on the surface of epithelial cells to enter these cells. Viral replication within the cells leads to cell damage and cell death. This results in the release of specific signalling molecules that alert the local immune system.

Armies of immune cells are then dispatched to initiate an antiviral response. Some of these cells are specialized to locate and identify the virus, while others mount a specific immune attack. The immune response results in the release of cytokines, chemokines and antibodies, which in many cases can defeat the virus, and the patient recovers.

Sometimes the immune system is dangerously at high alert and overreacts. In this case, the immune cells mount an especially strong inflammatory response — one that goes beyond what is required to kill the virus. This extra-strong attack releases cytokines and chemokines on a massive scale throughout the body, resulting in a cytokine storm, which causes widespread inflammation and tissue damage in patients with severe COVID-19.

One of the reasons for an abnormal, overreactive immune response lies in the gastrointestinal tract. Millions of interactions are constantly occurring between the immune system and trillions of non-dangerous microbes that live within the body. These interactions educate the immune system in how to function and, importantly, in how not to overreact to infectious microbes. Could this help explain why some people are more likely to develop uncontrolled inflammation upon COVID-19 infection?

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Trillions of micro-organisms that call your gastrointestinal tract home

The gut microbiome is the community of micro-organisms living inside the gastrointestinal tract, mostly in the large bowel. The microbiome contains bacteria, fungi (yeast), viruses and protozoa, all of which contribute to maintaining a balanced ecosystem and human health. These microbes collectively perform many beneficial functions, including educating the immune system.

When studying the microbiome, scientists examine the composition (what is there) and function (what are they doing) of this ecosystem. We have learned that both composition and function of the gut microbiome are important features linked to human health. In certain conditions, the balance of the gut microbiome composition and function is disrupted in a way that leads to disease, a phenomenon called microbiome dysbiosis.

There is accumulating evidence from animal and human studies that gut microbiome dysbiosis has a causal role in metabolism dysregulation manifested as diabetes and obesity — the risk factors of severe COVID-19 disease.

Is gut microbiome predisposing patients to severe COVID-19?

The gut microbiome regulates host defences against viral infections including respiratory viruses, such as influenza virus. This occurs through the activation of immune antiviral mechanisms and the prevention of excessive inflammation.

Different species of the gut microbiome have pro- or anti-inflammatory properties and play different roles in regulating the immune system. In the context of COVID-19, a recent preprint study (not yet peer reviewed) showed that specific members of the gut microbiome were associated with severe disease and with immune markers known to be elevated in severe disease. The association of these gut bacteria with the immune markers was even higher than that of the known risk factors of COVID-19 severity: age and obesity.

Further work is needed to confirm that pro-inflammatory microbial species can contribute to the immune responses that make severe COVID-19 more likely, but based on what we know about the microbiome, this is certainly a possibility. This also could mean that beneficial gut microbiome species, the type that promote low inflammation, have the potential to prevent or remediate the immune alterations that lead to severe COVID-19.

Gut Instinct: Human Microbiome May Reveal COVID-19 Mysteries https://t.co/IC1ek1hhoU @americangut @mcdonadt @KnightLabNews #CitizenScience #COVID19
— Redirecting account (@americangut) May 6, 2020

Potential for treatments and prevention

The research community is working very hard to develop and test safe and effective vaccines and treatments against COVID-19. Tapping into the potential of the gut microbiome is another avenue that we can pursue to identify potential safe and affordable probiotics for prevention and treatment. This is not unprecedented in the context of viral respiratory diseases: probiotics and prebiotics can affect the immune response to the flu vaccine, and may improve outcomes in flu-like illnesses.

Until effective treatments are available, “mind your microbes” and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Cage-free sounds good, but does it mean a better life for chickens?

Massachusetts is the latest state to vote on a ballot initiative to increase the amount of space that animals are allowed in industrial food production systems. It prohibits keeping pigs, cows and egg-laying hens in tight confinement that“prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely.”

Republished from The Conversation

You might think its passage is a major moral victory, at least for chickens, but is it? As a philosophy professor who’s worked on food issues for my entire career, I’ve come to believe that questions of animal welfare are more complicated than they seem at first glance. It’s not a clear choice which of the possible living conditions for egg-laying hens – enriched cages, cage-free systems, free-range setups – serve them the best.

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What does humanity owe chickens, anyway?

The philosophical question of whether animals deserve any kind of moral consideration has been debated at least since the ancient Greeks.

At one far end of the spectrum are those who say nonhumans cannot be regarded as proper subjects of moral concern. Some hold this on the basis of divine revelation – the other animals were put here for humankind to use as they see fit – while others deny that animals have the kind of subjectivity or experience that could give rise to a moral duty or obligation on our part. The 16th-century philosopher Rene Descartes likened animals to machines.

All the way at the other end of the spectrum are those who argue that what we owe to animals is not unlike what we owe to each other. We should not kill them, nor should we cause them pain or suffering save under highly unusual circumstances. We certainly should not eat them.

Eggs occupy a theoretically ambiguous place on this spectrum, as it is possible to produce them without killing any chickens. Nevertheless modern egg production does involve killing chickens. First, virtually all male chicks are destroyed within a few moments of hatching (though the egg industry has pledged to end this practice by 2020, using technology to determine the sex of fertilized eggs rather than waiting for chicks to hatch).

And egg producers will not bear the expense of continuing to feed hens after they have gotten too old to lay eggs. When the rate of lay declines, henhouses are “depopulated,” meaning birds are removed, killed and their carcasses are composted. As such, those who occupy the ethical vegetarian end of the animal ethics spectrum are no more supportive of the egg industry than they are of beef or pork production.

Chickens without cages don’t live in Eden.

What’s best for the hens?

Egg production has been a key target of animal welfare initiatives because at one time layers were so crowded that they literally had to stand on top of one another in the wire cages used by the modern egg industry. We can’t be sure these stocking densities have been entirely eliminated, but the vast majority of table eggs today come from chickens that have at least enough space to stand on the floor of their cage.

More important than these increased space allotments is the introduction of amenities that clearly matter to chickens: nest boxes, scratch pads and perches. These enhancements allow the birds to engage in the perching, dust-bathing, nesting and foraging behaviors they are highly motivated to perform.

By 2010, a consensus emerged among producers and some activists for moving to much larger cages that provided opportunities for most of chickens’ natural behaviors – the so-called enriched or colony cage. From the producer perspective, enriched cages represented the best compromise between slightly higher costs and improved welfare for hens. But recent pledges to source eggs from cage-free facilities have virtually taken the opportunity for enriched cages off the table. And that is where the moral uncertainty begins to turn wicked.

Out of the cage, into the fire

Cage-free and free-range systems clearly do a better job of allowing hens to express behaviors that are similar to those of wild jungle fowl. They can move around, and they have better opportunities for scratching, dust bathing and foraging. However, in comparison to enriched cages, hens in cage-free and free-range facilities suffer injuries simply because they move around more. Access to the outdoors often means that predators also have access to hens, and some are inevitably taken by hawks, foxes or the like.

A curious ethical point is that people seem to be roughly split on whether being chased and eaten by a hawk or a dog is a bad thing from a chicken’s perspective. In research done at Oklahoma State University, 40 percent of respondents saw the suffering of animals as the root issue for ethics, while 46 percent judged that pain, suffering or discomfort would not be significant if it was consonant with what an animal would experience in nature. Getting eaten by predators is certainly what chickens and their close relatives experience in the wild. (The remaining 14 percent of people surveyed didn’t care much about animal welfare beyond being sure that animals’ basic needs are met.)

Further complicating the “freedom” of cage-free and free-range enclosures, hens will peck one another in an effort to establish a dominance order. In small groups (the 40 to 60 birds that would be found in the enriched-cage system), this behavior generally recedes. But in flocks of 100,000 or more chickens, the least dominant birds can be subjected to so much pecking from other hens that their welfare is clearly worse than it would be in an enriched cage. Welfare scientists tend to favor aviaries (cage-free) over floor systems (free-range) because they allow better perching and thus give less dominant birds better places to hide.

Egg producers limit the damage that birds can do to each other by trimming off the sharp tip of their beak (which is also controversial). Even still, higher mortality from pecking gets treated as a cost of business in cage-free production facilities.

It is possible to house chickens in groups of 40 to 60 birds where pecking orders become stable quickly, but the roughly 6’ by 12’ enclosures for these groups look suspiciously like a cage to most people. This option may no longer be an option, however. Not only do ballot initiatives like the one in Massachusetts pass with overwhelming support, grocery stores and many chain restaurants are now pledging to abandon suppliers who utilize cages over the next five to 10 years.

Consumers don’t want to feel their eggs come with a side of cruelty. AP Photo/Toby Talbot

With the best of intentions

Egg production seems to be especially susceptible to actions where the public is highly confident that they’re in the right – even while many who’ve look closely at the alternatives are far less sure about how it feels to be a chicken in these operations.

Massachusetts voters thought chickens – as well as the pigs and cows that become pork and veal – would be better off in less tight quarters. Since the ban applies to the sale of any products from animals raised in restrictive cages, the ballot measure could have repercussions for food suppliers based far beyond Massachusetts. Opponents of the initiative predict the price of a dozen eggs will spike.

So do chickens benefit from more space, and should we turn them out of their cages? If we are trying to help them live a more natural kind of existence, then maybe we should. If we are interested in limiting the injuries they suffer from being pecked by other birds, as well as from getting hunted and killed by hawks, dogs and other predators, maybe not.

Moving To the U.S. Messes With Your Gut Bacteria

Human feces consist of undigested food residues and a great variety of bacteria. SEM shows a very large proportion of the bacteria and, thus, a high health hazard that the bacteria may contaminate food sources if hygienic rules are not adhered to, particu

Moving to a new country can be challenging, not just for us but also for our bacteria. A compelling new study published in Cell suggests migration between certain countries can profoundly affect the bacteria that live in our digestive systems, with important implications for our health.

The National Institutes of Health notes that immigrants to the U.S. are more susceptible to developing obesity and metabolic diseases such as diabetes than either people from the same countries who don’t migrate or native-born U.S. citizens, but we don’t really understand why. To try to understand this phenomenon from a health perspective, researchers from the University of Minnesota conducted a large, in-depth study of Chinese and Thai immigrants moving to the U.S. The authors looked at the diet, gut microbes and body mass index of the immigrants before and after they moved. The evidence showed that the longer immigrants spent in the U.S., the less diverse their bacteria became, and that this was linked to rising obesity.

The human gut is home to hundreds of different species of bacteria known collectively as the “gut microbiome.” As well as breaking down food, this community of microorganisms helps our bodies fight and prevent disease, according to BioMed Central, which also notes there is even tantalizing evidence that the gut microbiome can influence our mental health.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

A more diverse gut microbiome is associated with a healthier digestive system. And things that reduce this diversity, such as antibiotics, stress or changes in diet, can help make us more susceptible to conditions like obesity or irritable bowel disease.

The study compared a total of 514 healthy women, split into those born and living in Thailand, those born in Southeast Asia who later moved to the U.S., and those born in the U.S. to immigrant parents originally from Southeast Asia. It found that changes to the gut microbiome began as soon as the immigrants arrived in the U.S. and continued to change over decades. The longer they spent living there, the more their microbiomes began to resemble those of native-born Americans of European ethnic origin. The majority of participants, living in the U.S., also gained weight during the course of the study.

The combination of species that make up our gut microbiomes is strongly influenced by our diets, and so people from different parts of the world tend to have different bacteria. Western guts commonly contain lots of Bacteroides species, which are good at digesting animal fats and proteins. The guts of people with non-Western diets rich in plants tend to be dominated by Prevotella species, which are good at digesting plant fiber. The new study revealed that strains of bacteria from the immigrants’ native countries, particularly Prevotella species, were completely lost, as were relevant enzymes for digesting important plant fibers.

Cause or effect?

Studies that suggest that the microbiome can influence human health or disease are often challenged because it is hard to distinguish between cause and effect. In this case, it’s unclear whether changes in the microbiome are directly contributing to the high incidence of obesity in U.S. immigrants. It may be some time before we fully understand whether a less diverse microbiome leads to obesity, or if obesity leads to a less diverse microbiome.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Most of our knowledge in this area comes from studying laboratory mice. Groundbreaking studies from the lab of U.S. biologist Jeff Gordon first found a link between obesity and the gut microbiome in 2006, when they showed mice gained weight when they were given gut bacteria from obese humans. But, we also know high-fat diets drive obesity regardless of what’s in the gut microbime. So it would be premature to suggest that the microbiome alone is responsible for obesity.

With immigration increasing and eating habits evolving, it is important we better understand how changes in populations, cultures and diets can impact human microbiomes so that we can spot potential health problems. For example, we know that refugees, particularly children, are more prone to developing obesity so we need to develop novel strategies to combat this.

Education is one aspect and another is tackling poverty, which tends to be higher among immigrants than native-born citizens. But if the gut microbiome really is central to health and disease then finding ways to treat it directly by prescribing things like probiotics or even fecal transplants could help. One day we might even have microbial “pills” that could help migrants combat the changes to their gut microbiomes and settle more healthily in their new homes.

Chloe James is a senior lecturer in medical microbiology at the University of Salford, Manchester, U.K., and Ian Goodhead is a lecturer in infectious diseases, also at the University of Salford.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How We Can Turn Plastic Waste Into Energy

(The Conversation) In the adventure classic Back to the Future, Emmett “Doc” Brown uses energy generated from rubbish to power his DeLorean time machine. But while a time machine may still be some way off, the prospect of using rubbish for fuel isn’t too far from reality. Plastics, in particular, contain mainly carbon and hydrogen, with similar energy content to conventional fuels such as diesel.

Plastics are among the most valuable waste materials – although with the way people discard them, you probably wouldn’t know it. It’s possible to convert all plastics directly into useful forms of energy and chemicals for industry, using a process called “cold plasma pyrolysis”.

Pyrolysis is a method of heating, which decomposes organic materials at temperatures between 400℃ and 650℃, in an environment with limited oxygen. Pyrolysis is normally used to generate energy in the form of heat, electricity or fuels, but it could be even more beneficial if cold plasma was incorporated into the process, to help recover other chemicals and materials.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

The case for cold plasma pyrolysis

Cold plasma pyrolysis makes it possible to convert waste plastics into hydrogen, methane and ethylene. Both hydrogen and methane can be used as clean fuels, since they only produce minimal amounts of harmful compounds such as soot, unburnt hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide (CO₂). And ethylene is the basic building block of most plastics used around the world today.

As it stands, 40% of waste plastic products in the US and 31% in the EU are sent to landfill. Plastic waste also makes up 10% to 13% of municipal solid waste. This wastage has huge detrimental impacts on oceans and other ecosystems.

Of course, burning plastics to generate energy is normally far better than wasting them. But burning does not recover materials for reuse, and if the conditions are not tightly controlled, it can have detrimental effects on the environment such as air pollution.

Related: Many Hand-me-down Plastic Toys Are Toxic for Kids

In a circular economy – where waste is recycled into new products, rather than being thrown away – technologies that give new life to waste plastics could transform the problem of mounting waste plastic. Rather than wasting plastics, cold plasma pyrolysis can be used to recover valuable materials, which can be sent directly back into industry.

How to recover waste plastic

In our recent study we tested the effectiveness of cold plasma pyrolysis using plastic bags, milk and bleach bottles collected by a local recycling facility in Newcastle, UK.

We found that 55 times more ethylene was recovered from [high density polyethylene (HDPE)] – which is used to produce everyday objects such as plastic bottles and piping – using cold plasma, compared to conventional pyrolysis. About 24% of plastic weight was converted from HDPE directly into valuable products.

Plasma technologies have been used to deal with hazardous waste in the past, but the process occurs at very high temperatures of more than 3,000°C, and therefore requires a complex and energy intensive cooling system. The process for cold plasma pyrolysis that we investigated operates at just 500℃ to 600℃ by combining conventional heating and cold plasma, which means the process requires relatively much less energy.

Related: Microplastics in Sea Salt – A Growing Concern

The cold plasma, which is used to break chemical bonds, initiate and excite reactions, is generated from two electrodes separated by one or two insulating barriers.

Cold plasma is unique because it mainly produces hot (highly energetic) electrons – these particles are great for breaking down the chemical bonds of plastics. Electricity for generating the cold plasma could be sourced from renewables, with the chemical products derived from the process used as a form of energy storage: where the energy is kept in a different form to be used later.

The advantages of using cold plasma over conventional pyrolysis is that the process can be tightly controlled, making it easier to crack the chemical bonds in HDPE that effectively turn heavy hydrocarbons from plastics into lighter ones. You can use the plasma to convert plastics into other materials; hydrogen and methane for energy, or ethylene and hydrocarbons for polymers or other chemical processes.

Best of all, the reaction time with cold plasma takes seconds, which makes the process rapid and potentially cheap. So, cold plasma pyrolysis could offer a range of business opportunities to turn something we currently waste into a valuable product.

The UK is currently struggling to meet a 50% household recycling target for 2020. But our research demonstrates a possible place for plastics in a circular economy. With cold plasma pyrolysis, it may yet be possible to realise the true value of plastic waste – and turn it into something clean and useful.

Anh Phan, Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, Newcastle University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.