Fact check: Is plastic essential in the fight against COVID-19?
Despite the law of January 1, 2020, prohibiting the use of certain single-use plastic items (straws, cutlery, etc.), plastic is making a strong comeback.
Nathalie Gontard, INRAE and Valérie Guillard, University of Montpellier
Manufacturers in the sector are riding the Covid-19 wave: packaging, outer packaging, masks, visors, protective equipment for shopkeepers, and plexiglass are being produced and consumed en masse.
The transparency of plastic makes it an ideal choice when it comes to separating customers from a shopkeeper, for example. But the hygiene argument is the most commonly used: as a disposable material, plastic offers greater protection than other materials.
What exactly is the situation? Our experts compare plastic masks and natural fiber masks.
Microfiber masks... made of plastic
The most common, cheapest, and most widely distributed masks are made from a blend of polypropylene microfibers, the plastic resin par excellence. Polypropylene is the second most widely used plastic after polyethylene. You will easily find it in your neighbor's artificial turf or your car's bumper. Other masks are made from polyester microfibers.
The microfiber fabric in these masks allows air to pass through while blocking small particles suspended in the atmosphere, such as micro-droplets of water capable of carrying viruses, emitted by individuals wearing them... or those who are not wearing them.
Synthetic microfibers are inexpensive and produced in abundance by the petrochemical industry. This means that items containing them can be easily purchased and then thrown away, which is convenient for saving time, the great obsession of modern times. What's more, new items or virgin materials (still) convey an image of progress, guaranteed quality, and safety, particularly in terms of health, for those who can afford them. Disposable items promise to renew this promise of health safety at will.
The health crisis: an opportunity for some
It is precisely the coronavirus health crisis that has led to the resurgence of plastic and boosted sales of disposable products: masks, but also single-use cups in fast-food restaurants, online orders and "drive-through food" wrapped in plastic film, shopping bags, protective screens in shops, restaurants, etc.
The coronavirus crisis has struck us in the midst of a global plastic detox. Disposable items are now attempting to return to the forefront, positioning themselves as the hygienic material that saves lives by preventing contamination from reused materials.
The economic stakes are such that some manufacturers are not hesitating to ride the wave of anxiety linked to the health crisis to defy bans and revive their businesses. On April 8, the EuPC, the lobby group for European plastics processors, sent a letter to the European Commission asking it to postpone the European directive on single-use plastics (SUP) "by at least one more year at the national level" and to "lift all bans" already in place, a request that was rejected by the commission.
Is natural fiber less clean and less effective?
The virus persists for several hours to several days on all surfaces, including plastic microfibers. Under otherwise equal conditions, a coronavirus would persist much longer on a disposable polypropylene microfiber gown than on a cotton gown or paper surface.
In addition, masks made from natural fibers such as cotton, flannel, silk, or hemp have filtering capabilities that are just as effective as surgical masks made from synthetic fibers, trapping at least 80% of particles with an average size of 60 nanometers thanks to a combined effect of physical filtration and electrostatic effect. The performance of a sufficiently dense mask, regardless of the type of fiber used, is primarily related to how well it fits the contours of the face.
But above all, plastic persists for a long time, up to several centuries, in our environment in the form of micro- and then nanoparticles. The microfibers from your mask are likely to end up on your plate or that of your grandchildren. The mechanism is quite relentless: plastic microfibers break down, fragment, multiply, spread throughout our environment, become loaded with pollutants, and ultimately contaminate our food chain and threaten the proper functioning of living organisms' organs. The major risk associated with the use of plastic lies not only in theCO2 emissions generated during its life cycle, but above all in its ability to generate fine particle pollution long after it has been used. As they biodegrade, natural fibers have always been able to disappear by re-entering the biological carbon cycle and therefore do not pose the ultimate danger of plastic.
Pragmatism and caution
It would be tempting to give up and backtrack on single-use plastics by focusing on encouraging the collection and subsequent recycling of used masks. But "recycling" means restoring an object to its pre-use properties so that it can be reused in the same way. It is therefore a loop that, to be effective, needs to be closed, which we do not know how to do for synthetic microfibers because they degrade irreversibly during use.
So, let's try to stay the course and remain pragmatic in these times of viral chaos: washing a natural fiber mask remains the most effective form of recycling for eliminating contaminants, particularly viruses, the most economical and environmentally friendly option, and the most accessible to everyone.
The "precautionary principle," which we have been practicing intensively in recent months, should also apply to the use of plastic. In the absence of certainty about the long-term safety of plastic waste, let's keep only essential plastics and get rid of the rest... Let's hope that the amount still in use will not exceed the amount that our planet and our bodies can handle without suffering too much.
While plastics have extraordinary properties and are indispensable for certain uses, let us remember that we embraced them primarily because they were readily available, inexpensive, and we thought they were harmless. Now that we are aware of the dangers, let's take off our "all-plastic" glasses and agree to reinvent ourselves by choosing, as much as possible, materials and objects that are reusable, washable, and biodegradable at the end of their life.
This fact check was carried out in partnership with the Journalists and Scientists department of the ESJ in Lille.
Nathalie Gontard, Director of Research, Professor, Food and Packaging Sciences, INRAE and Valérie Guillard, Professor, Process Engineering Applied to Life Sciences, Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.