UK researchers unmask damage caused by PPE pollution on bird life during pandemic
08 Aug 2022 --- The improper management of a new category of litter has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, adding significantly to the pre-existing scourge of plastic pollution on the natural environment.
With the surge in use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and sanitation items such as facemasks, disposable gloves, disinfectant wipes and testing kits, reports have surfaced of pandemic-related debris being found in freshwater systems, urbanized areas and marine systems.
A report published by researchers in the journal Science of the Total Environment highlights the plight of avian species entangled in face masks.
The online citizen science project, Birds and Debris, run by researchers at the Environmental Research Institute, part of the North Highland College UHI and the University of the Highlands and Islands, UK, has been collecting photographs for four years from around the world of birds nesting or caught in waste as part of Blue Circular Economy, an initiative funded under the ERDF Interreg VB Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme.
Face masks destroying wildlife
The researchers studied 114 unique sightings of wildlife interactions with pandemic-related debris (38 from 2020 and 76 from 2021). Originating in 23 countries, most incidents involved birds (83.3%), while fewer affected mammals (10.5%), invertebrates (3.5%), fish (1.8%), and sea turtles (0.9%).
The majority of sightings were in the US (29), England (16), Canada (13) and Australia (11), but photos from 23 different countries, including Germany, France, Finland, India and Italy, were also included.
COVID-19 related debris has entangled and killed birds.While entanglements formed the most common interaction with PPE, in 40.4% of instances, nest incorporations were also observed.
Some of the sightings include a mute swan cygnet, black bittern, herring gull, among others entangled in a disposable face mask, common coot with disposable face masks and respirators incorporated into its nest, toukley osprey carrying a disposable face mask to its nest, red kite with a respirator incorporated into its nest, and razorbill entangled dead in a disposable face mask.
“It’s almost all masks,” Dr. Alex Bond, one of the researchers involved in the project from the Natural History Museum in London, told the BBC.
“And if you think of the different materials a surgical mask is made from - there’s the elastic that we see tangled around birds’ legs or we might see birds injured by trying to ingest the fabric or the hard piece of plastic that secures it over your nose. So we use this catch-all term of ‘plastic’ but it's a whole range of different polymers, and masks are a good example of that,” Bond notes.
Further plastic infestation
The report cites data from citizen science mobile application Litterati, showing that the UK had the highest proportions of discarded face masks, gloves and disposable wet wipes in the countries for which data were available, between March to October 2020.
While companies amped up production of PPE reportedly from the 2019 pre-pandemic value of US$800 million to over US$166 billion in the first year of the pandemic, the global increase in demand and production has also led to a worldwide increase in pandemic-related debris.
The material used to manufacture face masks is not biodegradable, and breaks down into microplastics.
“Despite the termination of mask mandates across different regions of the world, the billions of disposable pandemic-related debris items mismanaged during COVID-19 will remain in our terrestrial and aquatic environments for decades to come,” the study concludes.
By Radhika Sikaria
