Category: Environmental Effects

Categories : Environmental Effects NeurologyTags :

Endocrine-disrupting Chemicals may Raise Risk of Cognitive Disorders in Future Generations

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Adverse cognitive effects linked to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) exposure, a type of endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC), have the potential to be passed down through generations, according to an animal study being presented Thursday at ENDO 2023, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Chicago, USA.

PCBs can mimic the effect of oestrogen on the body, contributing to a variety of neuroendocrine, metabolic and reproductive problems.

“Endocrine-disrupting chemicals present in our food, air, water and personal products may cause cognitive-behavioural disorders like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or overeating in future generations,” said Emily N. Hilz, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.

To explore this further, Hilz and colleagues administered a common PCB mixture called Aroclor 1221 to pregnant female rats. The adults (n=40), their offspring (n=80), and their future grandchildren (n=80) were all tested on behavioural tasks to assess pleasure-seeking, ability to pay attention, and cognitive flexibility.

“The grandchildren of rats exposed to EDCs while pregnant performed significantly worse on these tasks, showing impaired cognitive function and increased pleasure-seeking,” Hilz said. “This suggests EDCs program potential cognitive disorders or behavioural problems that only emerge in later generations.”

Grandchildren of rats that were exposed to the PCB mixture were more interested in eating for pleasure, according to the results of the sucrose preference test. While all of the tested animals preferred the sucrose solution to water, the grandchildren of mothers exposed to the PCB mixture consumed more of the sucrose solution.

The same rats had an impaired ability to switch between tasks or learn new rules. However, only the male grandchildren were more likely to become fixated with a visual cue, which is common in disorders such as ADHD.

The PCB mixture impaired different aspects of cognitive behavior between male and female rats, depending on the life stage when they were exposed. It’s not yet clear which biological systems might be driving this.

“Our findings suggest regulating EDCs in industrial and consumer products could reduce the prevalence of certain cognitive or behavioural disorders in the future,” Hilz said.

Source: The Endocrine Society

Categories : Cancer Environmental EffectsTags :

Plants can Remove Carcinogenic Compounds from the Air

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Those pot plants in GPs’ waiting room may have an additional health benefit in addition to sprucing the place up. A ground-breaking study has revealed that plants can efficiently remove toxic gasoline fumes, including cancer causing compounds such as benzene, from indoor air.

The study was led by University of Technology Sydney (UTS) bioremediation researcher Associate Professor Fraser Torpy, in partnership with leading Australian plantscaping solutions company Ambius.

The researchers found that the Ambius small green wall, containing a mix of indoor plants, was highly effective at removing harmful, cancer-causing pollutants, with 97 per cent of the most toxic compounds removed from the surrounding air in just eight hours.

Poor indoor air quality is responsible for 6.7 million premature deaths globally, according to the World Health Organisation. Most people spend 90% of their time indoors at home, school or the workplace, so adopting new strategies to improve air quality is critical.

Ambius General Manager Johan Hodgson said the research presented new evidence into the critical role played by indoor plants and green walls in cleaning the air we breathe quickly and sustainably.

“We know that indoor air quality is often significantly more polluted than outdoor air, which in turn impacts mental and physical health. But the great news is this study has shown that something as simple as having plants indoors can make a huge difference,” Mr Hodgson said.

Previous studies on indoor plants have shown they can remove a broad range of indoor air contaminants, however this is the first study into the ability of plants to clean up gasoline vapors, which are one of the largest sources of toxic compounds in buildings worldwide.

Offices and residential apartment buildings often connect directly to parking garages, either by doors or elevator shafts, making it difficult to avoid harmful gasoline-related compounds seeping into work and residential areas. Many buildings are also exposed to gasoline fumes from nearby roads and highways.

Breathing gasoline fumes can lead to lung irritation, headaches and nausea, and has been linked to an increased risk of cancer, asthma and other chronic diseases from longer term exposure, contributing to decreased life expectancy.

Associate Professor Torpy said the study results, based on measurements from a sealed chamber, had far exceeded their expectations when it came to removing gasoline pollutants from the air.

“This is the first time plants have been tested for their ability to remove gasoline-related compounds, and the results are astounding.

“Not only can plants remove the majority of pollutants from the air in a matter of hours, they remove the most harmful gasoline-related pollutants from the air most efficiently, for example, known carcinogen benzene is digested at a faster rate than less harmful substances, like alcohols.

“We also found that the more concentrated the toxins in the air, the faster and more effective the plants became at removing the toxins, showing that plants adapt to the conditions they’re growing in,” Associate Professor Torpy said.

Mr Hodgson said the findings confirmed feedback they’d received after installing plants in hundreds of office buildings across the nation.

“At Ambius, we see over and over again the effects plants have in improving health, wellbeing, productivity and office attendance for the thousands of businesses we work with. This new research proves that plants should not just be seen as ‘nice to have’, but rather a crucial part of every workplace wellness plan.

“The bottom line is that the best, most cost effective and most sustainable way to combat harmful indoor air contaminants in your workplace and home is to introduce plants,” Mr Hodgson said.

Source: University of Technology Sydney

Categories : Environmental EffectsTags :

Ultra-protective Sunscreens May One Day be Based on Our Own Melanin

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Our body’s own melanin has long held potential as an inspiration for ultra-protective sunscreens, but has been too unstable to properly study. In Nature Chemistry, researchers report a major advance in understanding the fundamental structure of melanin and one of its subunits that turns light into heat, protecting the body from sun damage.

Melanin is the body’s natural pigment that is its first and best natural defence against the damaging effect of ultraviolet radiation. Cosmetics companies have long tried to harness the protective powers of natural and synthetic melanin for use in chemical sunscreens and other personal care products. For example, melanin could, in theory, be used to produce a radiation barrier that augments skin care products by matching a more diverse range of natural skin tones. But melanin is so notoriously unstable and difficult to study that, thus far, scientists have not been able to see what it looks like at the molecular level, resulting in a slow, trial-and-error approach to its potential use in personal care products.

“As we gain a better understanding of the structure of melanin, we should be able to predictably make alternatives that perform better than what is currently available,” said Jean-Philip Lumb, one of the lead authors of the paper. The study found that the melanin component converted light into heat from all wavelengths, spanning the ultraviolet to the infrared, offering a broad spectrum of protection. The molecule was also remarkably small, which the researchers say has practical benefits because the number of atoms needed to provide this level of sun protection is fewer than anything reported up to now. “We’ve taken a major step forward in understanding a new mechanism for how melanin can serve as a sunscreen,” Lumb said.

Source: McGill University

Categories : Environmental Effects New Compounds and TreatmentsTags :

US to Trial Anti-radiation Pills That Could Protect Against Fallout from ‘Dirty Bombs’

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The US National Institutes of Health is funding a new clinical trial of an oral anti-radiation treatment. So-called dirty bombs are nuclear weapons that release a cloud of radioactive isotopes, and are thought to be an attractive option for terrorists because they are far easier to build than true nuclear explosives.

In such a situation, as well as a nuclear accident, the danger is not so much from direct radiation in the form of X-rays, gamma rays and alpha and beta particles, but from radioactive materials which are absorbed into the body via contaminated air, food or water. Certain radioisotopes from radioactive fallout are readily absorbed by the body, and cause damage to DNA and cellular structures. Current treatment contain chemicals that bind to these radioisotopes, preventing them from being taken up by the body and instead rapidly excreted.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved two products for removing internal radioactive contamination. These drugs, both based on diethylenetriamine pentaacetate (DTPA), are administered intravenously by a healthcare provider and can remove three radioactive elements: plutonium, americium, and curium. 

In contrast, HOPO 14-1 is an oral capsule, which would be easier than an intravenous drug to stockpile and to deploy and administer during an emergency. Preclinical research has shown that HOPO 14-1 can effectively remove many radioactive contaminants, including uranium and neptunium in addition to plutonium, americium and curium. These studies also have found that HOPO 14-1 is up to 100 times more effective than DTPA at binding and removing these radioactive elements.

The trial will seek 42 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 65, who will of course not be exposed to radioactive fallout. They will be assigned into seven groups of six. Each participant in the first group will receive a 100-milligram (mg) dose of HOPO 14-1. The subsequent groups will receive increasingly higher doses of the study drug up to 7500 mg in the final group, if lower doses are deemed safe. Participants will undergo intensive safety monitoring and will be followed for 14 days to measure the absorption, distribution and elimination of the study drug. Results are expected in 2024.

Source: National Institutes of Health

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions Environmental EffectsTags :

Strong Link Between Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk

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Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), formed from burning various substances such as coal, wood or tobacco, or from grilled meat, is strongly linked to a person’s risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, suggests research published in the open access journal BMJ Open.

These chemicals also seem to account for most of smoking’s impact on risk of the disease, the findings indicate. Growing evidence links several environmental toxicants with various long term conditions. But few studies have looked at their association with inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, which is thought to arise from an interplay between genes, sex, and age, and environmental factors, including smoking, nutrition, and lifestyle.

To try and shed some light on the potential role of environmental exposure on rheumatoid arthritis risk, the researchers drew on responses to the nationally representative US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2007 and 2016.

NHANES evaluates a wide variety of toxicants, including PAH; chemicals used in the manufacture of plastics and various consumer products (PHTHTEs); and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), derived from paints, cleaning agents, and pesticides, among other things; along with data related to health, nutrition, behaviours and the environment.

The study included 21 987 adults, 1418 of whom had rheumatoid arthritis and 20 569 of whom didn’t. Blood and urine samples were taken to measure the total amount of PAH (7090 participants), PHTHTEs (7024), and VOCs (7129) in the body.

The odds of rheumatoid arthritis were highest among those in the top 25% of bodily PAH levels, irrespective of whether or not they were former or current smokers.

After accounting for potentially influential factors, including dietary fibre intake, physical activity, smoking, household income, educational attainment, age, sex, and weight (BMI), only one PAH, 1-hydroxynaphthalene, was strongly associated with higher odds (80%) of the disease.

PHTHTE and VOC metabolites weren’t associated with heightened risk after accounting for potentially influential factors.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, smoking wasn’t associated with heightened rheumatoid arthritis risk either, after accounting for PAH levels in the body. 

And further analysis to separate out the influences of PAH and smoking showed that bodily PAH level accounted for 90% of the total effect of smoking on rheumatoid arthritis risk.

This is an observational study, and as such, can’t determine cause. And the researchers acknowledge various limitations to their findings, including that measurements of environmental toxicants in fat (adipose) tissue weren’t available.

Nor did they measure heavy metal levels which have previously been linked to rheumatoid arthritis risk. Cigarettes are a major source of the heavy metal cadmium.

But they write: “To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that PAH not only underlie the majority of the relationship between smoking and [rheumatoid arthritis], but also independently contribute to [it]. 

“This is important as PAH are ubiquitous in the environment, derived from various sources, and are mechanistically linked by the aryl hydrocarbon receptor to the underlying pathophysiology of [rheumatoid arthritis].”

They add: “While PAH levels tend to be higher in adults who smoke…other sources of PAH exposure include indoor environments, motor vehicle exhaust, natural gas, smoke from wood or coal burning fires, fumes from asphalt roads, and consuming grilled or charred foods.

“This is pertinent as households of lower socioeconomic status generally experience poorer indoor air quality and may reside in urban areas next to major roadways or in high traffic areas.” These people may therefore be particularly vulnerable, they suggest.

Source: The BMJ

Categories : Environmental EffectsTags :

People Near Airports Likely to Suffer from Shorter Sleep

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A new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives has found that people who were exposed to even moderate levels of aircraft noise were less likely to receive the minimum recommended amount of sleep each night, and this risk increased among people living near a major cargo airport, or near a large water body, and among people with no hearing loss.

A new analysis by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Oregon State University has found that exposure to even moderate levels of airplane noise may disrupt sleep, building upon a growing body of research on the adverse health effects of environmental noise.

The study found that people who were exposed to airplane noise at levels as low as 45dB were more likely to sleep less than 7 hours per night. For comparison, the sound of a whisper is 30dB, a library setting is 40dB, and a typical conversation at home is 50dB.

Sleep is essential to overall health and well-being, including daily physical and mental functioning, and a lack of adequate sleep can lead to increased risks of cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes, cancer, and numerous other health conditions. Health experts state that most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night for healthy functioning.

This study is the first large-scale analysis of aircraft noise and sleep duration that accounts for the disruptive effects of multiple environmental exposures in communities, such as greenery and light at night (LAN).

Despite how common exposure to noise from aircraft is for many people, little is known about the health effects of aircraft noise, particularly in the U.S., according to study lead author Matthew Bozigar, assistant professor of epidemiology at OSU, and study senior author Junenette Peters, associate professor of environmental health at BUSPH.

“This study helps us understand the potential health pathways by which aircraft noise may act, such as through disrupted sleep,” Peters says.

For the study, Dr. Peters, Dr. Bozigar and colleagues from BUSPH, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health examined airplane noise exposure and self-reported sleep disturbance among more than 35 000 participants living around 90 of the major US airports. The participants were selected from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), an ongoing, prospective study of US female nurses who have completed biennial questionnaires since 1976.

The team examined aircraft noise levels every five years from 1995 to 2015, focusing on two measurements: a nighttime estimate (Lnight) that captures airplane noise occurring when people sleep, and a day-night estimate (DNL) that captures the average noise level over a 24-hour period and applies a 10 dB adjustment for aircraft noise occurring at night, when background noise is low. The DNL is also the primary metric that the FAA uses for aircraft noise policies, and the threshold for significant noise impacts is above DNL 65 dB. The team linked these measures at multiple thresholds with the nurses’ geocoded residential addresses.

After accounting for a range of factors, including demographics, health behaviors, comorbidities, and environmental exposures such as greenery and light at night (LAN), the results showed that the odds of sleeping less than seven hours rose as airplane noise exposure increased.

Short sleep duration was also more likely among nurses who lived on the West Coast, near a major cargo airport or a large body of water, as well as among nurses who reported no hearing loss.

“We found surprisingly strong relationships for particular subgroups that we are still trying to understand,” Bozigar says. “For instance, there was a relatively strong signal between aircraft noise and both dimensions of disrupted sleep, short sleep duration and poor sleep quality, near major cargo airports. There is likely more going on to this story, as cargo operations tend to use larger, older, heavily laden, and therefore noisier aircraft that often fly through the nighttime hours. And the quantity of cargo shipped by air has been steadily increasing over the last couple of decades, possibly linked to more e-commerce. If the trends continue, it could mean more aircraft noise impacts to more groups of people.”

While the results suggested a clear link between airplane noise and sleep duration, the researchers observed no consistent association between aircraft noise and quality of sleep.

Source: Boston University School of Public Health

Categories : Cardiovascular Disease Environmental EffectsTags :

Thesis Finds ‘Forever Chemicals’ don’t Increase Cardiovascular Disease Risk

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A new thesis by Karolinska Institutet student Tessa Schillemans has found that exposure persistent environmental pollutants did not increase biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risk – rather, exposure reduced them, raising further questions on their complex interactions with the environment and within the human body.

What is the thesis about?
The thesis is about a group of environmental pollutants called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also called “forever-chemicals”. Since we all are exposed and their chemical structure resembles that of fatty acids, we wanted to investigate whether exposure to PFAS associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Additionally, we also explored if we could gain insight in potential underlying molecular pathways by linking PFAS exposure to biological molecules in the blood.

Can you tell us about some interesting results?
We found no evidence that PFAS was linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the general population. If anything, rather the opposite – which also deserves careful consideration. We did observe associations with higher cholesterol, lower triglycerides and with lipid metabolism intermediates, which all point towards potential perturbations in lipid metabolism. 

What further research is needed in the area?
It is essential to fully understand any adverse consequences that PFAS may have, since they are omnipresent and persistent. Thus, epidemiological studies involving other outcomes and vulnerable subgroups (such as pregnant women and children) should also be performed, as disturbances in lipid metabolism could impact other physiological processes. For a deeper mechanistic understanding, integration of data from different biological systems (genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome) in human and experimental settings would be optimal. Additionally, since humans are exposed to many different chemicals simultaneously and these could interact with each other, there is a need for studies that investigate multiple exposures at the same time (exposome studies).

Source: Karolinska Institutet

Categories : Environmental EffectsTags :

Traffic Noise may Increase the Risk of Tinnitus

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There is a correlation between traffic noise and risk of developing tinnitus, researchers have found. They point to a vicious cycle involving stress reactions and sleep disturbance as a potential cause. Living near a busy road, it may increase stress levels and affect sleep – and during times of stress and poor sleep, people may be at a higher risk of developing tinnitus.

Published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a new study with data from 3.5 million Danes has revealed that the more traffic noise Danish residents are exposed to in their homes, the more they are at risk of developing tinnitus.

Tinnitus is most clearly manifested by annoying whistling tones in the ears, which are disturbing for many.

Risk increases with noise levels

It is the first time that researchers have found a link between residential traffic noise exposure and hearing-related outcomes.

“In our data, we have found more than 40 000 cases of tinnitus and can see that for every ten decibels more noise in people’s home, the risk of developing tinnitus increases by six percent,” says Manuella Lech Cantuaria, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney-Møller Institute.

She and her colleague Jesper Hvass Schmidt, Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Research and Chief Physician at Odense University Hospital (OUH) are concerned about the many health problems that traffic noise seems to cause. In 2021, they found a correlation between traffic noise and dementia.

“There is a need for more focus on the importance of traffic noise for health. It is alarming that noise seems to increase the risk of tinnitus, cardiovascular diseases and dementia, among other diseases,” says Jesper Hvass Schmidt.

Tip of the iceberg

Only the worst cases of tinnitus are referred from their own doctor or an otorhinolaryngologist. The high number of reported cases of tinnitus are probably only the tip of the iceberg, he believes.

“In general, about ten percent of the population experience tinnitus from time to time. It is associated with stress and poor sleep, which can be worsened by traffic noise, and here we have a potential cycle.”

More studies are needed so that researchers can be sure that traffic noise causes tinnitus, and how this happens.

“But we know that traffic noise can make us stressed and affect our sleep. And that tinnitus can get worse when we live under stressful situations and we do not sleep well,” Jesper Hvass Schmidt says.

Nighttime noise is worse

The researchers believe that noise at nighttime can be even worse for health. It affects our sleep, which is so important for restoring both our physical and mental health. “Therefore, it is worth considering whether you can do something to improve your sleep if you live next to a busy road,” Manuella Lech Cantuaria says.

What to do

In the study, higher associations were found when noise was measured at the quiet side of their houses, that is, the side facing away from the road. This is where most people would place their bedroom whenever possible, therefore researchers believe this is a better indicator of noise during sleep.

“There are different things one can do to reduce noise in their homes, for example by sleeping in a room that does not face the road or by installing soundproof windows,” says Manuella Lech Cantuaria.

But not everyone has those options, so she says that traffic noise should be considered a health risk to be taken into account in urban planning and political decision-making.

Electric cars will not make cities quieter

The Danish guidance level for harmful traffic noise is 58 decibels. It is a myth that replacing fuel cars by electric cars can significantly reduce traffic noise exposure at people’s houses. The noise comes mainly from the contact between the tires and the road.

Source: University of Southern Denmark Faculty of Health Sciences

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions Environmental EffectsTags :

A New Mosquito Repellent Alternative to DEET

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Mosquito, a malaria parasite vector
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The chemical DEET has proven effective at keeping disease-carrying mosquitoes at bay, but the repellent is smelly and its protection is short-lived. Now, researchers report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that they have designed safe alternatives with some advantages over DEET, including a nice smell and much longer protection.

DEET disrupts a mosquito’s ability to locate humans. Until recently, it was considered the gold standard among topical repellents, but some find its strong odor offensive. It has to be reapplied frequently, and at high concentrations, it can damage synthetic fabrics and plastics. Another popular repellent known as picaridin is now regarded as a better alternative, since its protective effect lasts longer, and it doesn’t have an odor or damage items. However, like DEET, it has to be reapplied after swimming or sweating.

So, Francesca Dani and colleagues wanted to look for alternatives to these established products. In prior work, the team used as starting materials two plant-based natural repellents that offered only short-term protection from mosquitoes. The researchers converted these terpenoids into cyclic acetals and hydroxyacetals, thereby extending their protective timespan beyond that of DEET. But the researchers wanted to improve on these initial products.

In the current work, the team synthesised additional cyclic hydroxyacetals from inexpensive, commercially available carbonyls. The new cyclic compounds had pleasant, much fainter odors and were easier to dissolve in water, meaning they can be formulated without high concentrations of alcohol. Some were as effective as DEET and picaridin at repelling Asian tiger mosquitoes, which have spread widely in the U.S. and carry diseases, including encephalitis, dengue and dog heartworm. And like picaridin, they provided human volunteers more than 95% protection from bites for at least eight hours, while DEET’s protection rapidly declined below that level after just two hours.

Toxicity of some of the most active new compounds was comparable to or lower than the traditional repellents. Two hydroxyacetals were also less likely to cause immune reactions or to penetrate cell layers than picaridin. The researchers conclude that their compounds represent a new class of promising mosquito repellents that can compete favorably with DEET and picaridin in terms of efficacy and safety.

Source: American Chemical Society

Categories : Environmental Effects Medical IndustryTags :

Can Fungi Transform Plastic Waste into Drug Components?

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Research on fungi has helped transform tough-to-recycle plastic waste from the Pacific Ocean into key components for making pharmaceuticals, using a genetically altered version of an everyday soil fungus, Aspergillus nidulans. The researchers described their chemical-biological approach in Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society.

“What we’ve done in this paper is to first digest polyethylenes using oxygen and some metal catalysts – things that are not particularly harmful or expensive – and this breaks the plastics into diacids,” said co-author Berl Oakley, professor at the University of Kansas.

Next, long chains of carbon atoms resulting from the decomposed plastics were fed to genetically modified Aspergillus fungi. The fungi, as designed, metabolised them into an array of pharmacologically active compounds, including commercially viable yields of asperbenzaldehyde, citreoviridin and mutilin.

Unlike previous approaches, Oakley said the fungi digested the plastic products quickly, like “fast food.”

“The thing that’s different about this approach is it’s two things – it’s chemical, and it’s fungal,” he said. “But it’s also relatively fast. With a lot of these attempts, the fungus can digest the material, but it takes months because the plastics are so hard to break down. But this breaks the plastics down fast. Within a week you can have the final product.”

The KU researcher added the new approach was “bizarrely” efficient.

“Of the mass of diacids that goes into the culture, 42% comes back as the final compound,” he said. “If our technique was a car, it would be doing 200 miles per hour, getting 60 miles per gallon, and would run on reclaimed cooking oil.”

Previously, Oakley has worked with corresponding author Clay Wang of the University of Southern California to produce about a hundred secondary metabolites of fungi for a variety of purposes.

“It turns out that fungi make a lot of chemical compounds, and they are useful to the fungus in that they inhibit the growth of other organisms – penicillin is the canonical example,” Oakley said. “These compounds aren’t required for the growth of the organism, but they help either protect it from, or compete with, other organisms.”

Oakley’s lab at KU has honed gene-targeting procedures to change the expression of genes in Aspergillus nidulans and other fungi, producing new compounds.

The researchers focused on developing secondary metabolites to digest polyethylene plastics because those plastics are so hard to recycle. For this project, they harvested polyethylenes from the Pacific Ocean that had collected in Catalina Harbor on Santa Catalina Island, California.

“There’ve been a lot of attempts to recycle plastic, and some of it is recycled,” Oakley said. “A lot of it is basically melted and spun into fabric and goes into various other plastic things. Polyethylenes are not recycled so much, even though they’re a major plastic.”

The KU investigator said the long-term goal of the research is to develop procedures to break down all plastics into products that can be used as food by fungi, eliminating the need to sort them during recycling.

“I think everybody knows that plastics are a problem,” Oakley said. “They’re accumulating in our environment. There’s a big area in the North Pacific where they tend to accumulate. But also you see plastic bags blowing around – they’re in the rivers and stuck in the trees. The squirrels around my house have even learned to line their nest with plastic bags. One thing that’s needed is to somehow get rid of the plastic economically, and if one can make something useful from it at a reasonable price, then that makes it more economically viable.”

Source: University of Kansas