in to i asked a little surprised hi irish and i am ready to dive into the hands of human to you. have you have a window to talk to me before you go to the spot and unexpected side to side. the micro plastics are everywhere there in our drinking water on our fields and in our blood. they've even been detected in clouds and micro plastics can contain talk since it's science long overlooked one source, car tires over half of the micro plastic in the environment comes from driving. these other highly toxic stories coming up on dw science show. welcome to tomorrow. today. here's

a dish that no one would consume willingly, solid wood particles from car tires, a toxic mix of rubber and a host of other chemicals. researchers at the university of vienna were able to prove in the lab that substances from tires accumulate and let us plans via from up the tire we're part of collaborative. this the chemicals and tires can be absorbed by plants and metabolized in plants. so they could potentially wind up on consumers plates coming each year around $100000.00 tons of tire where particles, a crew on roads in germany alone. tires are the source of most of the micro plastic and the environment. car tires are technical marvels as the only connection between the vehicles on the road. they need to have a good grip roll quietly. and last for a long time to do that,

hundreds of chemicals are added to them via sewer systems. these additives legion to the environment and the us researchers were long puzzled by a die off of pacific salmon populations until they prove that the sim and we're being poisoned by a substance created when tire, we're particles get into the environment. it's name 6 p p d, quinones. physically the austin was all we know from the us that mass depth of sam and that car solely due to tire aware particles that were washed off the streets. now there is evidence, for example, that these chemicals are just as toxic for trout and snails and all that pump system does look efficient. the experts say that fish populations in germany could also be effected, but these additives remain vital to tire, making the bulk and these are the we need these additives right now. take the most toxic one to 6 p p. d. quinones, this coin known as a decomposition product and needed to stabilize tires to protect them against oxidation and aging. so for now, you can't simply remove a ton of stuff from

a mental his pulse name. but we also cancel out the possibility that 6 p. p d is toxic to other creatures to including humans. its effects haven't been extensively studied. that alarms to hoffman and his team. they wanted to find out if the tire additive could also wind up in the human food chain. so for 14 days, they took young, let us plants, and added chemicals from tire. we're part of goals to their water. for the most common, the additives and the decomposition product, 6 p, p d quint in a 2nd test, they added physical tire aware particles to the water given to the plants. the analysis and the mass spectrometer showed that in both experiments, plants integrated the material into their cellular structure. i looked and stuff and all of the 5 substances we studied or absorbed and transported into the plant and metabolized by the plant. 2 metal bodies,

yet further studies should show whether these talks in this land up and let us not just in the lab, but also into real life conditions. but it's clear where there's traffic, there's tire aware, and that's unlikely to change in the near future. tire particles can wind up in the food chain through various channels, but a large number are washed into the sewers. inner city waste water is normally clean to treatment plans. the tire particles wind up in the leftover sewage slides . it's rich in phosphorus, which is why it's used to fertilize crops in many countries, including germany, austria, canada, and the u. s. in the fields that can come into contact with plants in germany, there are legal restrictions on using sewage sledges. fertilizer, tier fields used to grow letters can't have been treated with a sledge for at least 24 months outside the big cities. much of the water from the

street goes straight into rivers and lakes and treated. so a team at berlin's technical university studied whether tire, wear particles could be filtered right out of the drains themselves, down your thing. house swept city streets to collect dust entire particles. and he experimented with a variety of field tracing systems, placed under drain covers and the name of them tests that are test stand in berlin, under defined conditions and the addition of real st george and refuse if we dropped up to 97 percent of the particles uh, typically a great success, but not every filter is suited to every drain, since the mixture of the test leaves and other particles varies from place to place . to keep developing their field tracing system, the team wanted to find out where it is, the most tire, where occur. they installed filters in various measuring stations and analyzed the

remaining residue. the results showed up to 7 times more tire, where particles near bands and up to 3 times more at intersection. the reason taking sharp turns slowing down, starting and stopping, all put extra pressure on tires and lead to greater wear and tear. the traffic apps can help by providing tips for a more fluid driving style and monitoring the drivers brake too often. for example, the 30 kilometer per hour zones could also help reduce the amount of tire where particles and cities. the filters require a fair bit of maintenance, so it makes the most sense to employ them where lots of tire where particles accumulate. but why don't manufacturer simply change the materials used in their tires given their impact?

environmental scientists to hoffman thinks that's unrealistic at the moment itself . but this isn't long of it because there's a long way to go this. i'm not very optimistic that this will happen quickly, because we don't have good alternatives for many of the substances willis to start . realistically speaking, the development of truly more eco friendly additives will take 5 to 10 years. so what does all this mean for our supermarket? let us, despite the potential risk pawsman doesn't think people need to worry about that. does a lot of them are in general. the let us in the supermarket will be totally ok. well, that's not the problem kind of the point is that the complexity of chemicals in plastics must be reduced because some, $10000.00 chemical additives can be found in the plastics which pollute are earth both on land pending to see the effect of these chemicals needs to be better researched and their use limited tire particles. are

a big part of the problem. though it's expected that starting in 2026 tire manufacturers in europe, at least we'll have to comply with maximum limits for tire where particles. it's clear plastic is a big problem, but just how big is it and how small is a piece of micro plastic? exactly. and where is there more of it floating around in oceans and seas or in fresh water. busy well, mine rena examined water samples from the wells oceans because it's still unclear just how much plastic lines up in the marine environment. it's audible moment on with our research where specifically trying to analyze micro blasting to the fullest expertise we're trying to find out exact figures to discover and demonstrate how big the problem is, is it relies to and what it's a fact was, might be helped in boston to all the effects, you know, see, well monday, you know,

was out at sea himself and collected these samples. now he's examining them in the lab. the simple but was me, these here are samples from the mediterranean last week you have your standard pieces, a plastic like this fragments for it's from some kind of packaging. but then there's also a lot of file from a cigarette packs or potato chip bags, etc. particular all chips through to take the ones and then there's everything that comes from industrial fishing like left over bits of fishing. long histories is like the mediterranean is really one of the most if not the most polluted, sees when it comes to micro plastic exhaust. camico plastic full monday know, travels the loan to conduct his research. he's developing techniques to measure micro plastics and standardize these measurements this month. and that captures the smallest of plastic particles floating on the water surface.

the prostate is swimming around in old. if the wills oceans and the problem is only growing, it spreading through all areas of marine life the each year around $9000000.00 tons of plastic wines up in the world's oceans. so every minute, some 15000 kilograms of plastic waste floods into the sea. that's equivalent to the weight of 10 calls per minute. yet few people realize that rivers, lakes and soil more polluted with up to 23 times as much plastic as in nancy. it's on it. the numbers that have been communicated and continue to be communicated are far too low. it's out of assume you're going talk slow to many times what they are now, that for 2 reasons, die 1st, we on the research side of gain deeper insight into the matter. so we're seeing

more often we're going to be paying more attention to micro plaza and how much of it there really is. that alone will make the figures rise by $100.00, if not a 1000 percent. it's compared to what we've been told and plus all the literal pollution, which just keeps growing yellow to it. hold on dana thoughts, the collective plastic, according to its size. he and his team of focusing on fragments less than 3 millimeters long as there's little data on such small pieces. measure sits itself. we know that our body is absorbed glass statements. it's also been detected in human blood, but we still don't know what is the exact offensive that are fix that's being investigated using a variety of research method of solving. lane is research shows. switzerland also has a problem with plastic. michael prostate has been found in all of these lakes and in the mountains to lake geneva as well as i may look, crystal clear,

but micro plastic isn't always visible to the naked eye. the again, i'll save all myself. i've seen lake geneva, where we are now has around the same proportion of micro plastic a certain hot spots in the mediterranean, and we're finding really large amounts of plastic. maybe that's not surprising. even given that a lake is usually a closed system or at least has little in and out flow. so everything accumulates. each year, late to neighbor alone, takes in some 55 tons of plastic, mainly in the form of micro particles. it's estimated that around $580.00 tons of now accumulated in the like transported by rivers about 20 tons of micro plastics on switzerland and to the ocean. every year i contribute to pollution worldwide. so how can this problem be solved? classical name is a plastic problem, is a global problem that requires

a variety of approaches. it's not just about finding one that will work. you need different options on a variety of levels. so you can tackle the problem is a home. the the trouble is plastic doesn't decompose. it just breaks down into ever smaller pieces. but why is there so much of this stuff around? are all plastics the same? what's plastic actually made of a plastic is made of polymers change of molecules like this. usually plastic is produced using petroleum, when broken down into its individual parts and rearranged synthetic polymer change take shape. these both special characteristics. they're like you're tough and can take on almost any shape or form. the

plastic is easy to make, but hard to get rid of. synthetic polymers are hard to break apart and only break down very slowly. it can take between 501000 years for some of them to decompose the 1st, the plastic made from synthetic components was developed in 1907 because it's based materials were relatively inexpensive, plastic soon became ubiquitous. it promised to make our lives easier and better. yeah, state and sites, the pulse it sites the ice and site. less of your heart to the construct off site fight and us plus the say plastic is suited to mass production, allowing products to be made and reproduced quickly. but plastic and polymers aren't only produced from petroleum polymers can also be found in nature and used

to make bio plastic, corn, sugarcane, and cellulose can be processed to produce a molecular change that possessed similar characteristics to petroleum based plastics. while they're more easily broken down, they still take a long time to degrade. solutions are needed for disposing of bio plastics to recycling is one such solution, but it only works if the plastic is all of the same type. get most food packaging is made up of the colorful mixture of plastics, which must 1st be separated from one another and sort it could chemistry provide the solution to that problem. the in the swiss toner c on chemist samantha anderson has developed a new process to break down mixed plastic into its basic raw materials and recycling. so what's our secret? the chemical or cycling?

it's the i think it's the easiest way to take it from the polymer. to the monomer, and then back to the polymer again. i think this allows us to tackle complex waste . it allows us to do material recovery. um, yeah, i mean for us this is, this is the way that we're gonna, we're gonna achieve this. samantha anderson and her team found a way to turn plastic waste into plastic. that looks brand new. start by shredding the way it's it's all kind of mixed together. it's dirty, it hasn't been pre watched. anything like this. as you can see, there's different colors. there's different types of plastic and they're so ruby, we don't have to do any kind of pre screening that would be required for other types of technology out there. this secret chemical cocktail is her invention. at room temperature, it separates the p e t. from the other plastic pieces, the reaction is very specific to the p t plastic. so if you have a mix of p t and let's say pbc pvc won't react and the p h p will. so we can

actually separate out different solids from the p t, and then we can actually separate it with the monomers from the p t. uh, from themselves. she discovered the secret reagents together with our colleagues, party or values, odd a and christopher ireland. they're turning their innovation into a business, so we can't show you the whole process, especially not how the plastic waste is transformed into this mixture. as we did it on a friday night. and after about the 1st 30 minutes, we saw that it was working. and i remember running to christmas musical, my gosh, is working. and then we decided to wait the entire weekend just to make sure that everything reacted that. you know, we didn't want to stop the reaction to early and get not correct results. and it was the most suspenseful weekend, i think i've had an a really long time because you knew that when you would go back that there would be something waiting for you that you've got to explore and analyze. and just by monday, when we showed up,

it was more or less exactly like this. afterwards, the mixture is filtered to obtain the pure building blocks to create new plastic. the end product is dest powder. it's called purified propeller gases. it's commonly a source right now from the oil industry. so what they do is they pull out crude oil, it goes through a refining process and they make this white powder. and this powder is used to make any p t item polyester and any sort of plastic that has uh, termites, folic acid in it. yeah. so we can actually make it now instead of from oil directly from our own waste. so they can extract polyester from closing and for example, recycled, the remaining cop. that's possible because the plastic is removed at room temperature and not at high temperature. their prototype stands and an incineration plant. here they have a room where they can build tests and scale up their chemical recycling system.

terrell stomach acid. the basic building block for p e t is trapped by this filter, but it is chemical recycling, sustainable stress stop song. queen full health findings is good smudge on data. we use science outtake talk channel in labs. chemists create innovative compounds with tailor made characteristics like p size, their vital ingredients in many products, but they aren't found in nature so we make them ourselves. unfortunately, some peace officer also highly toxic. her and police flew elton substances or defense as an umbrella to for thousands of different chemicals. they do a great job of repelling water grease and it, which is why nearly every punch in the industry use has been different and noticed

it. cook with artificial leather furniture, firewood tightens, cleaning fluids, electronics, makeup, cars, pesticides, soils, drinking water and all food. literally as when he 1st pose a serious risk to health on the environment, and worst of all, they never degrade for this reason that also includes the chemicals funds. they have an impact on practically all of this high concentration is can lead to increase level weight and even cause cancer. kidneys are at risk to pay phones can also affects the quality of the booth weight of newborns can. likewise below it home, the substance is actually work in the body is unclear. according to what i thought this is a restructure cell battery is what scientists do know is that the immune response is low is and in general, flux seems can be rendered less effective. pay thoughts into the soil and votes

associates via landfill discharge emission, some industrial facilities, commercial waste flow to or simply when we watched rain coats, wastewater treatment ponds often con. so to them the e. u is thinking about binding o p funds except for essential ones like those used in medical equipment. but even if we succeed in outgoing the chemicals, one problem will remain of the what can be done about the huge amounts of p fast that are all ready in the environment. that's a question to which we still have no real lance or getting rid of them is like trying to take mill back out of your coffee again after adding it. but despite the difficulties, one attempt is under way at a nato airfield on germany's north sea coast. it's might look like a giant sand box here, but it's anything but

a playground. this entire area is contaminated, says cost, and hind from lower section these building management office in the front house bestbuy in tongue. we assume we'll need to wash $7.00 to $800000.00 tons of roads to get the p, pass out of the p fast spans for per and poly for roll out hills substances. these include more than $10000.00 different chemicals in various forms, summer solid, others liquid or gas. all p fast or synthetic organic compounds or hydrocarbons, in which many or all of the hydrogen atoms are replaced by flooring adams. that makes these compounds extremely robust and durable. in other words, dfcs are virtually impossible to break down as a result, these forever chemicals build up in places like soil

watching earth sounds like a crazy idea. the tower involved is huge and loud. in this stuff, the soil is sprinkled with clean water, rinsing away the larger elements. the principal is straightforward, is rinse shake and keep repeating the process until the dfcs are released into the water. projects lead to a band hard for it's points out to be fast, which can be seen here or during the washing process. he explains the fire fighting phone that's soaked into the contaminated ground and the past is rinsed out and basically floats to the surface and begins foaming all over again. told me now it's brown. the dfcs are later filtered out of the water and burned or disposed of properly. what's left behind is cleanse sandy. soil that

can once again be used as a construction material. the clean up takes a huge amount of effort and the funding wouldn't be, is asked whether or not the method can also be used at other clean up sites. cost and heinous is not always double. this oil has to be washable to clay like soil that clumps is hard to wash because much more fine material is leftover and it can harbor contaminants. this means that for many places in germany, at least washing the ground isn't a feasible solution. not to mention the guard tension when effort involved in cleaning up thousands of contaminated sites. the team involved says the process will take a decade where the alpha dish wednesday the cost is extremely high. this evening we're always a step behind the chemical industry or the chemicals. tomorrow we might be dealing with other contaminants that harm the environment. ones that are known today. it would be much easier to keep forever chemicals from contaminating the soil in the

1st place. that wraps things up this time around for tomorrow today to science show on dw, thanks for joining us and see you again next week the the,

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