The phrase “a canary in the coalmine” denotes an early indicator of potential danger. It refers to the former practice of taking live canaries into coal mines to test for the presence of toxic gases, particularly carbon monoxide. The illness or death of the canaries served as an indication that such gases were present.
The two warning signs about the harm that plastic is causing are the connection between bees dying out and human sperm counts plummeting. Bees and sperm counts are the new canaries in the coal mine, deadly warning signs that human life is in danger.
Both bees and sperms appear to be very sensitive to plastic pollution and other environmental hazards like pesticides.
Declining sperm counts are an “indicator that there is something very wrong in our modern environment or lifestyle,” says Dr Hagai Levine, head of the environmental health track at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health in Israel. “We need to identify what the causes are and fix them. Otherwise, it’s dangerous to our future and maybe irreversible.”
Microplastics—that is, plastic particles which are five millimeters or less across or in length—have entirely covered the planet. Animals accidentally eat microplastics all the time and plants regularly absorb them through their roots. Humans themselves ingest the rough equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic each week.
In a recent study, scientists at Nottingham University found that two chemicals common in home environments damage the quality of sperm in both men and dogs. The Guardian, May 24, 2019.
The culprits implicated are diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), used to make new plastics more pliable, and polychlorinated biphenyl 153 (PCB153), found in older plastics and electrical equipment. Companies stopped producing PCBs in the late 1970s due to their health risks–including a possible increased risk of cancer, hormone disruption, liver damage and behavioral or cognitive deficits in children exposed to the chemical in utero–but the chemical persists in the environment.
The Nottingham study is just one in a mounting pile of research findings indicating that the quality and quantity of men’s sperm is declining significantly. Research suggests that sperm counts have dropped by half in the last 50 years and that a higher percentage of sperms are poor swimmers–slow, ungainly or beset by genetic flaws and thus unlikely to fertilize eggs.
And, in a 2016 study of sperm collected from stud dogs, Richard G. Lea, an associate professor of reproductive biology at the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science discovered that the number of good swimmers decreased by 30% over a 26-year period.
Chemicals from plastics are particularly worrisome because they are so ubiquitous. Roughly two-thirds of the plastic ever produced has been released into the environment and show up as tiny particles in the air, water and soil. Eventually those plastics collect in the tissues and fluids in our bodies. Professor Lea says he focused on two compounds that “consistently popped up” in his analysis of dog food, sperm and testes tissues from routine neutering procedures. The most obvious concern of dropping sperm counts is infertility. But birth rates have been declining in industrialized countries for decades, he says, and it’s not clear that’s entirely by choice.
Recent studies suggest that 20-30% of young men today have sperm counts in a range that is associated with reduced fertility, according to Prof. Niels Skakkebaek of the University of Copenhagen. Professor Skakkebaek won the 2021 European Hormone Medal presented by the European Society of Endocrinology.
Bees lie at the heart of our survival. They pollinate one in three bites of food we eat and are essential to the health and prosperity of countless ecosystems.
However, bees are in peril. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, more than half of North America’s 4,000 native bee species are in decline, with one in four species at risk of extinction.
As honeybees make their way through the world, they are ideally suited to pick up bits and pieces of plastic along the way. Bees are covered with hairs that have evolved to hold tiny particles that the bee collects intentionally or simply encounters in its daily travels. These hairs become electrostatically charged in flight, which helps attract the small plastic particles. Pollen is the most obvious substance that gets caught up in these hairs, but so do plant debris, wax and even bits of other bees.
Now, another material has been added to that list: plastics. Specifically, 13 different synthetic polymers, according to a study of honeybees and microplastics in Denmark. The study was published in 2022 in Science of the Total Environment.
It’s well established that microplastics are spread extensively around the planet. Yet scientists are still learning how they move through the atmosphere. Sampling them is difficult and most research of airborne microplastics to date has been conducted at ground level, scientists say.
It turns out that honeybees—and all those hairy legs and bodies—provide a viable means for better assessing the distribution of windborne plastic fibers and fragments. Thanks to their large numbers and wide-ranging foraging, honeybees can be drafted as living probes of how microplastics are scattered around the world.
“This work demonstrates for the first time the possibility of using honeybees as a bioindicator for the presence of microplastics in the environment,” according to Prof. Robert Rosal at the University Alcala in Madrid, Spain. National Geographic, May 24, 2021.
Albert Einstein said, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live.” The world must address the harm caused by plastic pollution before it is too late, by drastically reducing plastic pollution and by cleansing the oceans of as much plastic as possible.
Joel D. Joseph is a lawyer and CEO of California Association for Recycling All Trash, author of “50 Ways to Reduce Plastic Pollution,” “Plastic Pollution Solution” and “The Age of Plastic,” A children’s book (under pseudonym George Poppel)
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2023
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