{"id":48841,"date":"2020-10-27T17:06:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T16:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=48841"},"modified":"2020-10-31T09:11:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-31T08:11:57","slug":"mary-e-black-plastic-waste-from-ppe-does-not-need-to-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/10\/27\/mary-e-black-plastic-waste-from-ppe-does-not-need-to-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary E Black: Plastic waste from PPE does not need to happen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My daughter calls on WhatsApp. Through the summer of 2018 she spent hours staring down a microscope to <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">distinguish fly wings from plastic films, and fish eggs from plastic pellets.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Her paper on the measurement of microplastics in Arctic waters from the Russian research ship <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/blogs\/research\/2018\/11\/ibm-q-arctic\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SS Professor Molchanov<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> has just been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0025326X20308638?via=ihub\">accepted for publication<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thunk. A package drops through my letter box: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhs.uk\/conditions\/bowel-cancer-screening\/home-test\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">my f<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">aecal immunochemical test kit (FIT)<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Hurray for an NHS that cares about my colon and wants to screen me for cancer. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I recall the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London when I screened folks for gut parasites. My patients stuffed flimsy plastic jars with the good stuff and posted them back in standard brown envelopes. I remember the panicked phone call from the St Pancras sorting office manager during another baking hot summer (1987). A package destined for our laboratory had burst. This newly designed FIT test scores much better on health and safety. Full eco-marks for the cardboard sleeve. The additional plastic packaging, however, gets zero brownie points.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">People are afraid of waste. I thank our sewage and water treatment workers every time I fill a glass of London tap water. We designed those solutions. John Snow stopped a cholera epidemic by disabling <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/johnsnowsociety.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the Broad St Pump<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">; Bazalgette\u2019s 200 year old vision of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.museumoflondon.org.uk\/discover\/how-bazalgette-built-londons-first-super-sewer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">a London super sewer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was public health genius. Today covid-19 contagion strikes fear into our hearts, especially if we have the exposure, years, waistline, ethnicity or co-morbidities that make us more susceptible. To protect people from harm we cover ourselves and them in layers of plastic. When I qualified as a doctor, almost all personal protective equipment (PPE) was reusable. Now the vast majority of the world\u2019s PPE is single use and contains a range of plastics, from polypropylene and polyethylene in face masks and gowns, to nitrile, vinyl, and latex in gloves. Oil prices have plummeted, rendering virgin plastic cheaper than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">PPE is not recyclable or biodegradable. Europe practices waste imperialism by shipping it for profit to poorer countries. Masks end up on our beaches and in our sea-life. Billions are spent on PPE and practically nothing on the ecologically safe design of PPE. Admittedly, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/thebakersinstitute\/2020\/04\/14\/pandemic-plastics-and-the-continuing-quest-for-sustainability\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">addressing sustainability<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is complex. If we do not design a solution soon to our mounting PPE plastic waste problem, then we will fix the immediate problem of covid-19, but <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/d5e27b1f-ba5a-4445-a329-1802cf70d619\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">create a long-term nightmare<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. We may have to live with this virus for years, but plastic will linger for centuries, so let\u2019s champion the design of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/healthcare-is-still-hooked-on-single-use-plastic-ppe-but-there-are-more-sustainable-options-143940\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">safe, non-polluting solutions<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Will we let this virus take our loved ones, our economy AND our oceans?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back to my daughter and her WhatsApp saga. Her distress is clear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">&#8220;The saddest thing, Mum, was watching a protozoan trying to engulf a fragment of plastic bigger than itself.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">&#8220;It wasn\u2019t thinking ahead,&#8221; I say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">&#8220;Why should it? It has no brain.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But we do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><strong><span class=\"il\">Mary<\/span>\u00a0E\u00a0<span class=\"il\">Black<\/span> <\/strong>is clinical director and director of health protection at Public Health Scotland. Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DrMaryBlack\">@DrMaryBlack<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong> None declared<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My daughter calls on WhatsApp. Through the summer of 2018 she spent hours staring down a microscope to distinguish fly wings from plastic films, and fish eggs from plastic pellets. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/10\/27\/mary-e-black-plastic-waste-from-ppe-does-not-need-to-happen\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mary-e-black"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mary E Black: Plastic waste from PPE does not need to happen - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/10\/27\/mary-e-black-plastic-waste-from-ppe-does-not-need-to-happen\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mary E Black: Plastic waste from PPE does not need to happen - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My daughter calls on WhatsApp. Through the summer of 2018 she spent hours staring down a microscope to distinguish fly wings from plastic films, and fish eggs from plastic pellets. 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