In our lifetime, seeing plastic littered on the side of the road has become a usual thing, but there is a new type of plastic that is difficult to see with the untrained eye, and it has begun to form on the Southwestern English coastline. On this beach, you will notice an array of small, smooth pebbles in the sand, but if you look closely, you’ll discover that some of these rocks aren’t rocks at all: they’re pyroplastic. Pyroplastic is a newly described form of plastic pollution that are transformed into rock look alikes by fire. In fact, they look so much like the stones and minerals we see everyday that we could walk by hundreds of them and not notice. After this new discovery, many scientists, one of which is Andrew Turner, an environmental scientist at the University of Plymouth, believe pyroplastics may be hiding in plain sight all over the world.
About a year ago, Turner decided to study this form of plastic pollution into more thoroughly. After taking some measurements, he wanted to test the compounds of these plastics and test to see if they are harmful to the environment at what degree. They learned that these pyroplastics are made of polyethylene and polypropylyene, which are two common forms of plastic. They also noticed that lead was found in these plastics, which has the potential to poison the body by harming the production of red blood cells.
After multiple studies, it is still unknown where pyroplastics originated. Turner suspects they could’ve come from campfires, or may have floated across the English Channel where waste is being burned in the city Sark and dumped at sea. Turner also is curious about what environmental hazards they could cause to our oceans and our animals. Not much has been determined yet, but it is certain that pyroplastic is yet another indicator that plastic is everywhere in the environment. They’re “becoming part of the geological cycle” and if we don’t get more answers soon, they might become a big problem too.