Buoyant, the size of a lentil and almost impossible to recover: how nurdles are polluting the oceans | Plastics

WPool A container with Liberian flag, the MSC Elsa 3, capsized and flowed at 13 miles off the coast of Kerala, India, on May 25, a disaster on a state scale was quickly declared. A long oil slide from the 184 -meter ship, which was carrying a dangerous cargo, was partially approached by dispersers at the origin of the planes, while an rescue operation sealed the tanks to avoid leaks.

But almost three months later, a more insidious and persistent environmental disaster continues along the ecologically fragile coast of the Oman Sea. Among the 643 containers on board was 71,500 bags of tiny plastic pellets called Nurdles. In July, only 7,920 would have been recovered.

Millions of these plastic balls continued to wash on the ground with the fierce monsoon storm waves which demolished a broken beach section of Palm in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, in June. They are dispersed by the Catholic church oriented at the Vettukadu Sea and in tidal lines on the beach, where giant jute bags, gathered by volunteers, are waiting for collection.

Light, dynamic and almost impossible to recover, they will circulate in the currents of sand and ocean in motion for years, according to experts.

“The Nurdles did not just pollute the sea – they disturbed our way of life,” said Ajith Shanghumukham, fish worker in the city.

A fishing ban, imposed after the local authorities of four Kerala districts by local authorities, has since been lifted, but fears of contamination have struck the fishermen’s communities struggling with decreasing fish populations and the evolution of climate intensification storms.

“Very few people now venture into the sea because local markets simply do not buy fish,” explains Shanghumukham.

Those who report nets full of nurdles and downward catches. “People continue to worry about contamination,” says Shanghumukham.

While 100,000 fishermen’s families received compensation from 1,000 rupees (£ 8.50) from the state, this represented less than a week of income for the most part. “The crisis has plunged many families into poverty,” he says.

The Nurdles, a familiar term for plastic pastilles, are the raw material used for almost all plastic products. The size of a lens, between 1 and 5 mm, and therefore potentially classifying as microplastics or fragments less than 5 mm, they can be devastating for fauna, especially fish, shrimp and sea birds that confuse them with food. They also act as “toxic sponges” attracting so-called chemicals forever such as PCB and PFA in sea water on their surfaces, and also wear harmful bacteria such as coli.

“When they are ingested by marine life, these pellets introduce a cocktail of toxins directly into the food canvas,” explains Joseph Vijayan, environmental researcher of Thiruvananthapuram. “Toxins can accumulate in individual animals and increase concentration in the food chain, ultimately affecting humans who consume seafood.”

Microplastics have been found in human blood, brain, breast milk, placentas, sperm and bone marrow. Their complete impact on human health is not clear, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks.

The location and timing of the spill could not have been worse, says Vijayan. Almost half of India’s sea fish is landed in the Malabar Upwelling region, where the sinking has occurred.

And the turbulent season of the Kerala monsoon, from June to August, which has bothered cleaning operations, is a period of high marine productivity, when the rise in nutrients rich in nutrients brings plankton flowers, the base of the maritime network.

In a disturbing way, after the spill of the Keralan, there have been reports of Nurdles which was lvus on beaches of Sri Lanka, a recall of the worst spill of recorded plastic pollution of history when the container of the Nurdles of the Nudles X-Press, carrying chemicals, took the fire and released 1,680 tonnes of Nurdles in the sea 2021.

The Kerala catastrophe, the last in a series of pellets of granules, once again exposed huge gaps in responsibility, transparency and regulations in the plastic supply chain, according to environmentalists.

Dharmesh Shah, a Kerala -based plastic activist at the Center for International Environmental Law, said: “These spills expose the cross -border nature of pellet pollution, affecting countries, whatever their role in plastic production.

“They reveal a chronic lack of enforceable global standards through the supply chain – from production to transport – associated with transparency, report and inadequate responsibility.”

Sekhar Kuriakose, from the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, believes that cleaning could take up to five years. The State made a compensation request of $ 1.1 billion (820 million pounds sterling) against MSC. The container wedding company MSC, who chartered the ship, as well as the owner, made a reconvention request, contesting the jurisdiction and seeking to limit their responsibility.

But the consequences of Nurdle’s spills are felt on a global scale. In March, Nurdles was washed on the British coast of Norfolk after a container ship collided with an oil tanker in the North Sea. In January 2024, millions of granules were washed on the Spanish Galician coast.

Communities can wait years for compensation. It took last month at the highest court of Sri Lanka to rule that the owners based in Singapore of X-Press Pearl had a compensation of $ 1 billion for the “unprecedented devastation of 2021 for the marine environment” and the economic damage.

At least 445,000 tonnes of Nurdles are estimated in the environment in the world; About 59% are land spills, with the rest at sea. The number of large dumps from Nurdle at sea increases, according to Fidra, a Scottish Environmental charity.

With plastic production, which should triple more than 1 billion tonnes per year by 2060, as well as more frequent and intense storms, the threat should grow, with a few 2TN Nurdles spreading in the environment per year. However, no international agreement exists on how to pack and transport the Nurdles safely, or even classify them as dangerous.

This week, delegates of more than 170 countries meet during the talks of the UN plastic pollution in Geneva, in order to resolve deep divisions as to whether plastic production will be included in a final treaty. Activists hope that successful discussions will allow a global approach to the loss of pellets, packaging, transport and legal responsibility.

Amy Youngman, lawyer for the environmental investigation agency, said: “Due to biodiversity in the region, the Kerala spill is devastating. But to come four years after the X-Pearl Xpress, it was predictable. ”

A problem, she says, is that ships are not required to disclose that they carry pellets. Another is the failure to recognize damages when overturned. “They are not considered dangerous or dangerous materials so that they are shipped like any other product,” she said.

Human error causes most of the spills, she said, adding that the laws on manipulation and storage of pastilles could reduce spills by 95%.

A research document published in June co-written by Therese Karlsson, a scientific advisor for the International Network for the elimination of pollutants, has shown that plankton may well have been poorly trained after exposure to chemicals the leachate of plastic debris in plastic and burned plastic of X-Pearl Express. Out of 16,000 plastic chemicals, 4,000 are known to be dangerous. “But for more than 10,000 of them, we do not know the impacts on health,” she said.