The Impact of Single Use Masks
As COVID-19 continues to upset everyday life, the use of masks has become almost automatic. However, problems begin to arise when people forget to take into account the various environmental impacts of their facial coverings. Similar to the plastic rings that are used to hold soda bottles together, single-use masks, if not disposed of properly, can have adverse effects upon our oceans and marine life. If we continue to consume plastic at the same rate that we have been, there is an estimated three-fold increase in plastics that will be wrongfully thrown into our oceans by 2040 (Mallos). But what does this mean? A normal single-use mask is made of polypropylene, which is a plastic that has many uses. Though it is a common plastic that has been deemed safe, it is unsafe in terms of the ocean and can be lethal towards environmental systems—when disposed of, polypropylene takes between twenty to thirty years to decompose in landfills (LeBlanc). Worsening this issue is the dwindling landfill space which forces more and more trash to litter our once beautiful white sand beaches and vast oceans. By switching over to a couple of staple reusable masks, not only is the common person helping implement this new confusing part of our lives into something more normal, but they are also helping to salvage the marine environment for the helpless animals that are in the line of fire of the unprecedented and deadly effects of plastic pollution. According to UN News, without any action taken, “it is expected that 75% of the used masks, as well as other pandemic-related waste, will end up in landfills or floating in the seas,” (“Five things…”). Similar to the plastic rings that go around soda bottles, ties on the disposable masks could potentially end up wrapped around the neck of the marine animal, which could cause them to choke and ultimately die. In some cases, when said plastic is thrown wrongfully into the ocean, marine animals have a tendency to mistake it for food. When ingested, this plastic will fill up the stomachs of the helpless marine animals and ultimately cause them to starve. This issue will be worsened with the increased usage of disposable masks. In addition to the large chunks of plastic, microplastics are already an issue in marine and human life and will worsen if action is not taken. As plastics degrade over time, they break into smaller pieces until they are of microscopic size. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, invisible pieces of plastic have been infiltrating into the diets of fish and have been identified in tap water, beer, and salt (“Marine Plastics”). The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development director of international trade, Pamela Coke-Hamilton, explained in an interview with UN News that “plastic pollution was already one of the greatest threats to our planet before the coronavirus outbreak, and the sudden boom in the daily use of certain products to keep people safe and stop the disease is making things much worse,” (“Marine Plastics”). By polluting our oceans with an excess of plastic and soon, disposable masks, we will ultimately be putting plastic products right into our diets when we eat the fish and other marine animals that contain microplastics. Yet, this multifaceted problem cannot simply be solved by completely eliminating the use of polypropylene masks.
Some issues do begin to arise when it comes to healthcare workers. Due to the great increase in hospital patients due to COVID-19, nurses and doctors will see larger-than-normal sums of people per day. As healthcare workers must use disposable masks for their job on a normal basis, their consumption of disposable masks has greatly increased during the pandemic as they must change their masks after each and every patient to ensure safety. For healthcare workers, wearing disposable masks instead of reusable ones is a necessary action to take for the safety of the patients. According to Kevin Hunt of Hartford HealthCare, an N95 mask is the most efficient in its ability to filter out airborne particles and should be used in emergency healthcare settings (Hunt). In a study done in Vietnam, a group of healthcare workers was split in half. One half were given reusable cloth masks to wash and reuse every day, while the other half were advised to use single-use masks. The outcome of the study was that all infection outcomes were highest when it came to cloth masks (“A cluster randomised trial…”). Though this is shocking information, it is important to remember that these are individuals who are in extremely high-risk positions. Kim Schive, writing for MIT Medical, explained that this study exhibits that “unless you are a frontline healthcare worker, this does not have much relevance to the precautions you should be taking on campus or elsewhere...and there is steadily accumulating evidence that cloth masks perform that function well, by containing respiratory droplets before they can be expelled into the air,” (Schive). When the usage of polypropylene masks by healthcare workers is combined with the consumption of medical single-use masks from normal citizens, it will ultimately cause an increase in the production of them, which will prove to be detrimental to the marine environment. According to the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, if everyone in the UK used one disposable mask each day for a year, it would create over 70,000 tons of plastic and would cause ten times the environmental impact than using reusable masks (“New publication on single-use masks”). The UK’s population is only a small fraction of that of the United States, so the possible effects of the increase in the US consumption of plastic masks will be far more detrimental to the environment (“The environmental dangers…”). As greater sums of people continue to wear these masks, more and more people are haphazardly throwing them into the trash without a care in the world, and without proper recycling techniques, our oceans will continue to fill with more trash until it is a desolate environment devoid of the rich life that it once fostered. In some cases, though, the use of plastic masks may be completely necessary. To combat this, we must cut down on the purchasing and usage of these masks to the absolute bare minimum—to those who absolutely need them for their jobs.
Though the filtration of an N95 mask is better than that of a cloth mask, which may seem like daunting information, it is important to understand that cloth masks are still almost completely effective in their filtration process. For those who are the most at risk of coming in contact with the virus, it is safest to use an N95 or a surgical mask according to the CDC (Chughtai). In contrast, the CDC also recommends that cloth (reusable) masks are to be used in community settings and to prevent community spread. Not only does this leave more medical supplies for healthcare workers, but it allows for a lower amount of plastic masks being discarded into our environment. Though it also may be cheaper on the spot to buy disposable polypropylene masks in bulk rather than buying a single reusable cloth one, in the long run, as COVID-19 is showing no signs of disappearing anytime soon, it will end up being more cost-efficient to own one or two reusable masks that can be rotated rather than unnecessarily purchasing big boxes of the product that will prove to be detrimental to our marine environments. Because it is necessary for healthcare workers to use single-use medical masks for safety purposes, it will become even more important for hospitals and health centers to require the recycling of these masks and for people that do not work in high-risk environments to avoid the use of polypropylene masks as a whole unless completely necessary. Until then, the homes of many marine animals are in a constant state of jeopardy due to the wrongful dumping of plastic into our oceans.
After writing multiple posts on different types of pollution relating to the air, earth, and the sea, we have come to realize the severity to which the issue of pollution has become. Our oceans have already faced blatant abuse from chemicals and acidification, and they are just beginning to feel the tight grip of the impact of plastic, and the excessive use and production of polypropylene masks will only worsen the effects of this. From the usage of harmful chemicals in sunscreen to the accidental yet incredibly destructive oil spills to the blatant disregard of the health of marine life, our oceans have and continue to be harshly abused by human activity. With little legislation being created to help protect the wildlife and animals that live in our oceans, the overall health of our earth will continue to deteriorate with each passing day. Not only will the excessive usage of polypropylene masks worsen the state of the already weak and damaged animals and their home, but it will also cause irreversible damage to the health of the planet as a whole. Plastic has found its way into almost all aspects of life on the planet: food, energy, nature, and now health, fueled by the heavy usage and integration of polypropylene masks into daily life. In order to put a stop to this unprecedented abuse of our earth, people who do not work in health care need to completely eliminate the usage of non-reusable masks in their lives and switch over to the more humane, healthy, and environmentally conscious option: the reusable cloth mask.
Works Cited
Chughtai, Abrar A. "Effectiveness of Cloth Masks for Protection Against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2." CDC, 22 July 2020, wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.
"A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers." US National Library of Medicine, 22 Apr. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/?fbclid=IwAR0VXF8NdjsNnNzBAmYVjPN_Pt8xROn1wN89ILPYqHPu0Txr6hqzZ631yXs. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.
"The environmental dangers of employing single-use face masks as part of a COVID-19 exit strategy." Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, 24 Apr. 2020, www.plasticwastehub.org.uk/news/the-environmental-dangers-of-employing-single-use-face-masks-as-part-of-a-covid-19-exit-strategy. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.
"Five things you should know about disposable masks and plastic pollution." UN News. UN.org, news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1069151. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.
Hunt, Kevin. "Cloth Mask vs. Surgical Mask: The Surprising Covid-19 Winner." Hartford Health Care. Healthnewshub.org, healthnewshub.org/health-news-hub/top-news/cloth-mask-vs-surgical-mask-vs-n95-how-effective-is-each/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.
LeBlanc, Rick. "New Technologies Promise to Help Boost Recycling Rate." The Balance Small Business, Dotdash, 9 May 2019, www.thebalancesmb.com/an-overview-of-polypropylene-recycling-2877863#:~:text=Products%20made%20of%20PP%20degrade,characteristic%20poses%20severe%20environmental%20concerns. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Mallos, Nick. "The World is on Track to Triple Ocean Plastic Pollution by 2040." Ocean Conservancy, 28 July 2020, oceanconservancy.org/blog/2020/07/28/world-track-triple-ocean-plastic-pollution-2040/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
"Marine Plastics." International Union for Conservation of Nature, www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastics#:~:text=The%20most%20visible%20and%20disturbing,are%20filled%20with%20plastic%20debris. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
"New publication on single-use masks." Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, 7 July 2020, www.plasticwastehub.org.uk/news/new-publication-on-single-use-masks. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.
Schive, Kim. "Do cloth masks actually work?" MIT Medical, 2 July 2020, medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/07/do-cloth-masks-work. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.
