The Political Thread

MORE Articles on DDECE'S (Deadly Devastating Extreme Climate Events OR better known as Global Warming), Pollution & Other Related Articles:

--10-19-18: edition.cnn.com/2018/10/18/opinions/trumps-failure-to-fight-climate-change-sachs/index.html  
(CNN) — President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and others who oppose action to address human-induced climate change should be held accountable for climate crimes against humanity.

They are the authors and agents of systematic policies that deny basic human rights to their own citizens and people around the world, including the rights to life, health, and property. These politicians have blood on their hands, and the death toll continues to rise.

Trump remains in willful denial of the thousands of deaths caused by his government's inept, under-funded, and under-motivated response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year.

The image that will remain in history is of the President gleefully throwing paper towels for a photo op as the people of Puerto Rico around him suffered and died of neglect.

Last month, Hurricane Florence claimed at least 48 deaths, with more likely to come in its aftermath. This past week Hurricane Michael has claimed at least 32 lives, with more than a thousand people reportedly still missing. The final death toll will likely soar in the months ahead as the residual consequences of the storm become more clear.

As the Earth warms due to the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, climate-related disasters that include high-intensity hurricanes, floods, droughts, extreme precipitation, forest fires, and heat waves, pose rising dangers to life and property.

Hurricanes become more destructive as warmer ocean waters feed more energy to the storms. Warmer air also carries more moisture for devastating rainfalls, while rising sea levels lead to more flooding.

Yet Trump and his minions are the loyal servants of the fossil-fuel industry, which fill Republican party campaign coffers. Trump has also stalled the fight against climate change by pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

The politicians thereby deprive the people of their lives and property out of profound cynicism, greed, and willful scientific ignorance.

The first job of government is to protect the public. Real protection requires climate action on several fronts: educating the public about the growing dire risks of human-induced climate change; enacting legislation and regulations to ensure that families and businesses are kept out of harm's way.

For example by stopping construction in flood plains, and investing in sustainable infrastructure to counteract rising sea levels; anticipating the rising frequency of high-intensity climate-related disasters through science-based preparedness following through on properly scaled disaster-response during and after storm events.

And most importantly for the future, spearheading the rapid transition to zero-carbon energy to prevent much greater calamities in the years ahead.

This straightforward to-do list is the opposite of what Trump and his cronies are doing. Trump blithely disregards scientific findings about climate change and thereby exposes the nation to unprecedented risks.

The officials he has appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency and other relevant parts of government are industry cronies and lobbyists far more interested in self-enrichment, padding their accounts, and helping their once-and-future employers than in doing their current jobs.

Trump's mishandling of last year's Puerto Rico disaster in the wake of Hurricane Maria is grounds itself for impeachment and trial.

Thousands of citizens died unnecessarily on Trump's watch because the administration could not be stirred to proper action before, during, and after the hurricane.

Two independent, detailed epidemiological studies, using different methodologies -- one led by researchers at Harvard University and the other by researchers at George Washington University -- have estimated that thousands died in the aftermath of Maria.

While dozens died during the storm, thousands more died as a result of the residual effects of the storm. Maria downed electricity and wreaked havoc on the ability of Puerto Ricans to meet their life-sustaining needs by disrupting access to health services, safe water, and transportation.

They died, in short, from the storm, and ultimately from inadequate disaster prevention, preparedness and response.

Yet when the George Washington University study was released in September, the President responded by saying, "I think we did a fantastic job" in Puerto Rico. He brazenly denied the death count, without any attempt whatsoever to understand or learn from the findings.

Recent scientific studies underscore the dire emergency ahead. Professor James Hansen, one of the world's leading climatologists, has demonstrated that the Earth's climate has moved above the temperature range that supported the entire 10,000 years of civilization.

The risks of catastrophic sea level rise are upon us. A group of world-leading ecologists recently highlighted that critical Earth systems could spiral out of control.

The Nobel-prize winning Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has also just released a harrowing report showing that the world has just a few years left to move decisively towards renewable energy if it hopes to achieve the globally agreed target to limit warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average temperature of the planet.

The huge bills for Hurricanes Florence and Michael will now start rolling in: funerals, suffering, sorting through debris, and perhaps $30 billion in losses that could have been reduced dramatically through science-based planning and foresight.

The American people are paying a heavy cost for the cynicism and cruelty of politicians in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry. It is time to hold these reckless politicians to account.

--10-20-18: www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-scientist-who-predicted-a-grim-hothouse-earth-says-the-world%e2%80%99s-billionaires-need-to-give-up-their-money-to-save-us/ar-BBOAVX5?li=BBnb7Kz  
There's a lot of doom and gloom about the state of the planet.

Earlier this month, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report suggesting that by 2040, the world will be 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was before we started burning fossil fuels like coal and gas for energy.

Other scientists have suggested the world could hit a tipping point that triggers a "hothouse" state, in which the Earth would shift from a self-cooling biosphere into a self-warming mode.

That could make our planet 4, 5, or even 6 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, triggering unprecedented natural disasters.

But scientists still harbor some hope.

This week, one of authors of that bleak "hothouse" report has co-authored a new one that models how the world and its people may fare in the coming decades.

In brief, ecologist Johan Rockström, who directs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Stockholm, thinks there might be a way to cut global emissions while eliminating poverty and hunger and keeping the world cool enough to sustain future generations.

"This is actually quite uplifting," Rockström recently told a crowd at the TED Conference New York Headquarters, before the report came out.

But the plan requires enormous shifts in the way we do everything, from how we distribute money to the ways we grow our food.

Here's the five-part formula:

1. Cut global greenhouse-gas emissions in half every decade, starting in 2020

These emissions come from burning fossil fuels that power our cars, planes, buildings, and food supply; they're the reason the atmosphere is trapping more of the sun's heat than it used to.

Rockström's proposal to slash emissions rates in half every decade is a steeper target than the Paris climate deal called for - countries who signed that agreement vowed to cut emissions 40% by 2030 (or at least try to).

President Donald Trump has promised to pull the US out of that deal; on Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that the US reduced its emissions by just 2.7% last year.

2. Increase food chain system efficiency, from soil to table, by 1% every year

A massive shift in the way we produce, harvest, and consume food would apply to every piece of land and sea across the world. As the authors write, "at least 1% extra resource use improvement per year is required in the whole food chain, from soil to table."

This would be crucial, since droughts and extreme weather threaten crops as diverse as coffee, rice, wine grapes, and barley for beer.

3. Fundamentally shift the way we create new wealth and prosperity

"We're quite clever at short-term lifting people out of poverty," Rockström told Business Insider. But there's a hidden cost in our current models of economic development: "the wealth that we've created in countries like the US, or my own home country Sweden, has occurred at the expense of the climate system," he said.

As economies grow and people get richer, rising production and consumption mean that more coal, oil, and gas get burned. That activity emits more carbon dioxide.

"It occurs by eroding the resilience of the Earth system," Rockström said. "That's not only the climate system, that is losing biodiversity, it's ruining the oceans, it's deforestation, it's risking the stability of the whole planet."

Rockström proposes looking to some new development models that focus on community-level development and the use of local resources. These kinds of approaches are already in use in places like Ethiopia and Costa Rica.

4. Ensure the richest 10% of people on Earth don't hold on to more than 40% of its wealth

Rockström's plan also demands a dramatic reshuffling of the world's cash. More taxes on top earners could pay for better infrastructure, while improvements in wages would be a welcome bump for middle class workers, many of whom haven't seen their pay go up much since the 1970s.

Some of that shared money would also get used for healthcare, while other funds could go to education and investments in more sustainable buildings and cities around the world.

Currently, the top 1% of people own nearly half of the world's household wealth.

According to Credit Suisse's 2018 global wealth report, "the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 85% of global wealth, and the top percentile alone accounts for almost half of all household wealth (47%)."

This is especially true in the US, which has more members of the 1% than any other country. Credit Suisse defines membership in the top 10% as having $93,170 or more in net assets, while the top 1% has $871,320.

5. Investing more in education, health, and family planning

In addition to improving people's lives, this would help control population growth, as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation often points out.

Letting more girls continue their education and receive wanted contraception would change the global demand for energy, food, travel, buildings, and all other resources on the planet.

It's an aggressive solution, but it's the only one the researchers think will kept the planet and its people healthy in the long run

The computer modeling system that these climate and welfare projections were based on is called Earth3.

It's a projection tool that factors in social and economic data from the past 40 years and couples that information with what we know about how the planet's atmosphere, oceans, and land will likely react to greenhouse gas emissions.

This ambitious five-step global transformation wasn't the first plan Rockström and his team of scientists tried out in Earth3.

Initially, they charted three other scenarios. First, they analyzed what would happen to the Earth's climate and its people if we change nothing about the way we do business.

Second, they calculated what would happen if we accelerate economic growth. And third, they looked at how the world would fare if that economic growth were coupled with efforts to fund more education, clean water, food, and jobs.

But none of those more traditional trajectories worked out in the long run - they all made the Earth too hot. So Rockström and his colleagues landed on this model, which is more ambitious and far less tested.

They also discovered that the costs of this plan to society would be relatively small: by 2050, according to their estimate, GDP would be just one year behind where it would be if we continue on a business-as-usual path. And we'd probably make up for that loss in the long-term, they said, since we'd keep the planet from becoming a "hothouse."

As the authors of the report argued, "most rational analysts" would agree that in the long run "the Earth's life-supporting systems are worth it."

--10-15-18: www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-14/china-is-the-climate-change-battleground?srnd=premium  
Climate change is a menace. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued a report showing how serious the situation is. If warming continues on its current trajectory, the report warns, then by the end of this century average temperatures will be 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

That may not sound like a big rise, but in fact the results will be catastrophic. Already, the world has warmed by 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution started, and the effects are starting to be apparent -- the ice in the Arctic is vanishing, devastating hurricanes like Michael and Maria are becoming more common, and wildfires are gobbling up homes and businesses in California.

An additional 3 degrees rise would be far more dire -- large parts of major coastal cities would be flooded and become uninhabitable, global food production would be in danger, storms and heat waves would reach epic proportions, and flooding and starvation would create waves of desperate refugees clamoring for entry to the U.S. and Europe.

Even a rise of only 1 more degree -- which now seems inevitable -- will carry serious consequences.

The effort required to halt climate change will be intense -- essentially, the equivalent of a mobilization for war.

The IPCC estimates that in order to limit global warming to the relatively safe level of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world would need to eliminate coal power and invest $2.4 trillion a year in green energy technologies.

That's is about 3 percent of global economic output, or 10 percent of global capital formation. It’s doable, but daunting.

There’s one huge problem with this plan, however -- the bulk of this massive, unprecedented investment will have to be done not in wealthy nations, but in developing countries.

And one developing country looms much larger than the rest. China now releases almost as much carbon dioxide as the U. S. and Europe combined:

The true imbalance is much larger than it appears on this graph. Developed countries grow slowly -- perhaps around 2 percent a year. China, because it’s still catching up, grows much faster, at around 6.5 percent.

That rapid growth is why China’s emissions have soared since 2007, even as the U.S. and Europe have made modest progress. As China continues to catch up, its already enormous share of global emissions will only grow, unless it takes dramatic steps to decarbonize its economy.

To its credit, China has made moves to limit coal use. But the country’s emissions continue to rise.

This leads to a painful but inescapable truth -- no matter how much they spend, no matter how dramatically they change their societies, the U.S. and Europe won’t be able to put much of a dent in global warming on their own.

Yes, the U.S. should ban coal power, tax carbon heavily and spend lots of money on building green energy infrastructure. But without a huge change in China, none of that will matter -- the battle against climate change will be lost.

That truth will naturally sit uneasily with Americans, who as a group have grown accustomed to being the driver and arbiter of world events. Being dependent on the actions of foreigners to save U.S. cities, crops and homes is disconcerting and unfamiliar.

Many -- including pundits and leaders who should know better -- will be tempted to escape into fantasy, declaring that climate science is overhyped, or that a halt in rich-country growth will be enough to solve the problem.

Others will desperately cling to the hope that by setting a good example, the U.S. can cause China to change by moral force alone -- ignoring that Europe set a good example by embracing the Kyoto Protocols and the Paris Agreement, and China’s emissions barely paused.

But retreating into the illusion of control will do nothing to avert the very real threat of environmental doom. Instead, Americans should think about ways that they can encourage China to reduce its carbon emissions.

One idea is to tax products from China based on their carbon content. Unfortunately, this is likely to have at best a modest effect.

There is a popular misconception that U.S. emissions have decreased only because they’ve been outsourced to China via offshoring of polluting industries.

But when emissions are calculated based on how much countries consume, the basic situation between the two nations looks much the same:

A better idea is to actively encourage China to give up coal. China, due to coal use and its manufacturing-heavy economy, uses more carbon to produce each dollar of gross domestic product than most other countries:

There is thus lots of scope for improvement. The U.S. should consider both carrots and sticks to make that happen. ARPA-E, the U.S.’s energy-technology research agency, should be dramatically scaled up.

Either all technologies produced by ARPA-E should be given to China for free, or the agency turned into a joint venture with China, ensuring that Chinese companies are able to replace coal with solar and wind as quickly as possible.

In many cases, it’s bad when China copies American technology -- in this case, it’s exactly what the planet needs. Of course, these technologies should also be given to India, Africa and other developing countries seeking to lift their people out of poverty. This technology transfer could be accompanied by direct payments to China to help it replace its coal plants with green alternatives.

Another potential approach is conditional tariffs on Chinese products. Instead of only taxing the carbon content of Chinese-made goods, the U.S. could threaten to put tariffs on all Chinese products unless it agrees to leave more of its coal permanently in the ground.

Banning exports of coal from the U.S., and heavily subsidizing exports of solar and wind technology, would also help make coal less attractive around the world. Tariffs could also be placed on coal exporters like Australia, Indonesia and Russia, encouraging them to keep their own coal safely underground.

Even with measures like this, the degree to which the U.S. and Europe can force China into going green is limited. To a large extent, the fate of the planet is now out of the developed world’s hands. But that isn't an excuse for doing nothing.

--10-17-18: www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/tornadoes-are-spinning-up-farther-east-in-us-study-finds/ar-BBOuSYb?li=BBnb7Kz  
WASHINGTON — Over the past few decades tornadoes have been shifting — decreasing in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas but spinning up more in states along the Mississippi River and farther east, a new study shows. Scientists aren't quite certain why.

Tornado activity is increasing most in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and parts of Ohio and Michigan, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.

There has been a slight decrease in the Great Plains, with the biggest drop in central and eastern Texas. Even with the decline, Texas still gets the most tornadoes of any state.

The shift could be deadly because the area with increasing tornado activity is bigger and home to more people, said study lead author Victor Gensini, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University.

Also more people live in vulnerable mobile homes and tornadoes are more likely to happen at night in those places, he said.

Even though Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma get many more tornadoes, the four deadliest states for tornadoes are Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"More folks are generally at risk because of that eastward shift," Gensini said.

Because tornadoes sometimes go undercounted, especially in the past and in less populous areas, scientists don't like to study trends by using counts of tornadoes. Gensini and tornado scientist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Lab looked at "significant tornado parameters," a measurement of the key ingredients of tornado conditions.

It looks at differences between wind speed and direction at different altitudes, how unstable the air is and humidity. The more of those three ingredients, the more likely tornadoes will form.

The increases in this measurement mirrored slightly smaller increases found in number of twisters.

The study looked at changes since 1979. Everywhere east of the Mississippi, except the west coast of Florida, is seeing some increase in tornado activity. The biggest increase occurred in states bordering the Mississippi River.

Overall there is a slight increase in tornado activity, but it's not too much and not nearly like what's happening in the east, Gensini said.

Why is this happening?

"We don't know," Gensini said. "This is super consistent with climate change."

As the Great Plains dry out, there's less moisture to have the type of storms that spawn tornadoes, Gensini said. Tornadoes form along the "dry line" where there are more thunderstorms because there's dry air to the west and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to the east.

That dry line is moving east.

--10-16-18: www.cbsnews.com/news/llano-river-flooding-texas-forecasters-warn-about-major-flooding-2018-10-16/  
Forecasters tweeted warnings Tuesday about major flooding along the Llano River in Texas. "Seek higher ground!" the National Weather Service tweeted.

The river at the city of Llano was over 39 feet as of 6:30 a.m. local time and expected to crest around 41 feet, according to the National Weather Service.

"Major flooding is ongoing," it said, calling the situation "dangerous."

A flash flood warning was in effect for Llano, Fredericksburg and Kingsland until 3:30 p.m. local time. Forecasters urged those living in vulnerable and low-lying areas along the river to seek higher ground immediately.

"The Llano River has hit major historic flood stage," the Llano County Office of Emergency Management said in a Facebook post. It urged residents living within a quarter of a mile of the river to evacuate.

Since Monday, more than 10 inches of rain has fallen in parts of the the Llano River Watershed, according to the National Weather Service.

Last week, four men were swept away by floodwaters in the city of Junction. The bodies of three men were recovered. AND 10-23-18: www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/austins-bacteria-warning-sends-people-scrambling-to-buy-water/ar-BBOMiwz?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=U147DHP  
Recent flooding has prompted Austin city leaders to say immediate action is needed to keep the city from running out of water. "It's imperative that not only you boil water that you're going to consume, but you do all that you can to reduce the amount of water that you use until we can get through this event," Austin water director Greg Meszaros said.

The city's warning sent crowds of people scrambling to buy bottled water, stripping store shelves clean, reports CBS News correspondent David Begnaud.

"After seeing so many people, I thought I should probably get three cases," Austin resident Monica Marcano said. Health officials say the tap water may contain bacteria and viruses that could make people sick. "These organisms are extremely small and even potentially a droplet of water that is affected could be enough to cause an illness," Dr. Harry Thomas said.

Historic flooding has washed mud, silt, and other contaminants into the Colorado River and nearby lakes that supply Austin's water. In response, the city shut down portions of its three treatment plants for cleaning. Customers in Austin typically use some 120 million gallons of water daily.

"Normally, we could produce over 300 million gallons a day. We haven't been much over 100 for the last two days," Meszaros said.

The city's restaurants are among the hardest hit. Many owners have closed their doors until they can safely reopen. "This is the first time, you know, in history that we have a problem like this. So we can't take it lightly," Yamil Hernandez of Morelia Mexican Grill said.

Officials say so far, no tests have returned positive for bacteria in the drinking water, but there is still a chance people could get sick. The CDC says most household water filters typically do not remove bacteria or viruses, and you should boil water for a minimum of three minutes to make it safe to drink.

--10-17-18: www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/entry/mammal-diversity-extinction-study_us_5bc59f68e4b055bc94796ecf  
Humans have helped propel the extinction of more than 300 mammal species — equaling a staggering loss of 2.5 billion years’ worth of unique evolutionary history, according to a grim new study published Monday.

It could take many millions of years for mammals to evolve enough new species to recover from the destruction humans have caused, researchers estimated. The human species, however, won’t likely survive to see the day.

“We are doing something that will last millions of years beyond us,” paleontologist Matt Davis of Denmark’s Aarhus University, who led the new research, told The Guardian of humans’ devastating impact on biodiversity.

The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that it could take up to 5 to 7 million years for mammal diversity to be restored to the level it was before the arrival of modern humans — and that’s assuming people cease all poaching, pollution and habitat destruction in the next 50 years.

Like many scientists, Davis believes the world is currently in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, also known as the anthropocene extinction or one caused by human activity.

Davis told The Atlantic this week that “what we are going through now could have as big an impact as the asteroid” that killed off most of the dinosaurs.

It’s a “pretty scary” situation we’ve created, Davis said. “We are starting to cut down the whole tree [of life], including the branch [humans] are sitting on right now,” he told The Guardian.

--10-22-18: www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-14-year-long-oil-spill-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-verges-on-becoming-one-of-the-worst-in-us-history/ar-BBOHEpy?li=BBnb7Kz  
NEW ORLEANS —An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.

Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan.

Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. With no fix in sight, the Taylor offshore spill is threatening to overtake BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster as the largest ever.

The Taylor Energy spill is largely unknown outside Louisiana because of the company’s effort to keep it secret in the hopes of protecting its reputation and proprietary information about its operations, according to a lawsuit that eventually forced the company to reveal its cleanup plan.

The spill was hidden for six years before environmental watchdog groups stumbled on oil slicks while monitoring the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster a few miles north of the Taylor site in 2010.

The Interior Department is fighting an effort by Taylor Energy to walk away from the disaster. The company sued Interior in federal court, seeking the return of about $450 million left in a trust it established with the government to fund its work to recover part of the wreckage and locate wells buried under 100 feet of muck.

Taylor Energy declined to comment. The company has argued that there’s no evidence to prove any of the wells are leaking. Last month, the Justice Department submitted an independent analysis showing that the spill was much larger than the one-to-55 barrels per day that the U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center (NRC) claimed, using data supplied by the oil company.

The author of the analysis, Oscar Garcia-Pineda, a geoscience consultant who specializes in remote sensing of oil spills, said there were several instances when the NRC reported low estimates on the same days he was finding heavy layers of oil in the field.

“There is abundant evidence that supports the fact that these reports from NRC are incorrect,” Garcia-Pineda wrote. Later he said: “My conclusion is that NRC reports are not reliable.”

In an era of climate change and warmer open waters, the storms are becoming more frequent and violent. Starting with Ivan in 2004, several hurricanes battered or destroyed more than 150 platforms in just four years.

On average, 330,000 gallons of crude are spilled each year in Louisiana from offshore platforms and onshore oil tanks, according to a state agency that monitors them.

The Gulf is one of the richest and most productive oil and gas regions in the world, expected to yield more than 600 million barrels this year alone, nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. oil production. Another 40 billion barrels rest underground, waiting to be recovered, government analysts say.

About 2,000 platforms stand in the waters off the Bayou State. Nearly 2,000 others are off the coasts of its neighbors, Texas and Mississippi. On top of that are nearly 50,000 miles of active and inactive pipelines carrying oil and minerals to the shore.

And the costs are high.

For every 1,000 wells in state and federal waters, there’s an average of 20 uncontrolled releases of oil — or blowouts — every year. A fire erupts offshore every three days, on average, and hundreds of workers are injured annually.

BP has paid or set aside $66 billion for fines, legal settlements and cleanup of the 168 million-gallon spill — a sum that the oil giant could, painfully, afford. But many companies with Gulf leases and drilling operations are small, financially at-risk and hard-pressed to pay for an accident approaching that scale.

One of them was Taylor Energy.

--10-23-18: www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/are-tiny-plastics-finding-their-way-to-your-stomach/ar-BBOM119?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=U147DHP  
It is an unfortunate reality that plastics have contaminated our environment to a great degree.

Now, in the first study of its kind, researchers from Austria have discovered the presence of microplastics in human poop as well.

Microplastics refer to tiny particles of plastic, ranging from 10 nanometers to 5 millimeters in diameter. In other words, they could be small enough to be invisible to the naked eye.

The new findings suggest that we may be involuntarily ingesting these plastics, the consequence of which remains unclear for now.

The Medical University of Vienna and the Environment Agency Austria recruited a small group of participants from around the world. The group comprised of eight healthy individuals from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Austria.

They were monitored with the help of food logs which revealed what they were eating during the week before their stool samples were collected. While only six of them consumed fish during this period, none of the participants were vegetarians.

They also consumed foods that were wrapped in plastic packaging and drank from plastic bottles.

On average, the researchers found 20 microplastic particles per 10 grams of stool. Out of the ten types of plastics they tested for, nine were found. Among them, polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) were the most common.

The question that arises is an obvious one: Where exactly are the microplastics coming from? The answer cannot be determined from this study alone due to the small sample size.

On one hand, it is possible the wraps and packaging may be playing a role. Previously, studies have also shown how high levels of phthalates were found in urine samples of people who ate fast food more often.

Another cause may be tied to the dietary pattern as seafood consumption may be another medium for plastic to make its way into the human gut. Research has shown that a large number of fish are ingesting microplastics which could indirectly contaminate food supplies.

"This is the first study of its kind and confirms what we have long suspected, that plastics ultimately reach the human gut. Of particular concern is what this means to us, and especially patients with gastrointestinal diseases," said lead researcher Dr. Philipp Schwabl, who will present the findings at the 26th United European Gastroenterology conference in Vienna, Austria, on Oct. 23.

"While the highest plastic concentrations in animal studies have been found in the gut, the smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the bloodstream, lymphatic system and may even reach the liver.

Now that we have first evidence for microplastics inside humans, we need further research to understand what this means for human health," Schwabl said.