Microplastics in Haiti

Microplastics remain a major problem for environmental health in Haiti, particularly their presence in a large quantity of water sources.

Origins

Haiti does not have collective storage for plastic and other waste, and thus plastic is often disposed of in urban water evacuation canals, which then degrade to form microplastics. These microplastics, which are fragments of plastic invisible to the naked eye, enter the natural environment and contaminate soils, rivers and oceans. Microplastics refer to all plastic particles whose diameter is less than 5 millimeters.

Effects on the environment

Microplastics are emerging contaminants and their impacts on the aquatic and terrestrial environment are causing increasing concern. Microplastic contamination can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on soil properties. Additionally, microplastics have been shown to interact with a wide range of contaminants, including pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, and antibiotics, and can act as a vector for contaminant transfer in terrestrial environments.

Microplastics and their associated chemicals can be transferred through food webs and accumulate across multiple trophic levels, leading to potentially adverse health effects in humans and other organisms. Although several studies have focused on the occurrence and impacts of microplastic contamination in marine environments, their sources, fate, transport, and effects in terrestrial environments are less studied and poorly understood.

Microplastic pollution in the environment is closely determined by surrounding industrial and human activities. In light of pollutant control, it is important to trace the source and behavior of microplastics from terrestrial ecosystems. Freshwater systems can directly receive microplastics from several primary sources, such as manufacturing processes and landfill operations. Microplastics have been reported in fresh water from lakes, rivers and wastewater treatment plants. Pollution sources, anthropogenic impacts and hydrodynamics have been shown to potentially influence the rate at which microplastics accumulate and are transported. Although the proportion of plastics from wastewater in fresh water is largely unknown, effluents from industrial and domestic sources contribute significantly to microplastic pollution.

Haiti has no collective system for waste collection and treatment . What's more with its tropical temperature and average daily duration of 12 hours, the plastics prėsent in urban waterways could degrade more rapidly, generating microplastics. Their discharge into Port-au-Prince Bay exposes this ecosystem to a number of environmental hazards pollutants contained in the waste, and to climatic hazards, particularly ocean acidification .

Measures and actions to mitigate the impact of microplastics

On August 9, 2012, the Hatian government published a decree prohibiting the production, importation, marketing and use, in any form whatsoever, of polyethylene bags and expanded polystyrene objects for foodstuffs. individual. However, 14 Caribbean countries (more than a third) have banned single-use plastic bags and/or polystyrene containers.

On July 10, 2013, a second decree was published to once again prohibit “the importation, production or sale of expanded polystyrene articles for food use.” In support of the second decree, the ministries of the Environment, Justice and Public Security, Trade and Industry as well as the Economy and Finance announced in a note published in January 2018 that specialists from the brigade will be deployed on the territory to force the application of the said decree.

Development of alternative solutions

The presence of miscroplastic in water poses a threat to the water and wastewater treatment technologies used. One solution to avoid the negative impact of microplastics on the performance of water processes would be to reduce the number of microplastics reaching these units. Which involves cleaning up plastic waste in natural environments and opting for biocompatible plastics, plastic degradation methods. For most scientists and policymakers, cleaning up the oceans is not an economic or logistical task. The further upstream the mitigation is, the greater the possibility of collecting more plastic with less degradation. Completely avoiding the production of new plastics wherever possible is the best solution and reliable way to avoid the generation of microplastics, whether primary (necessary for the production of new plastic items) or secondary (resulting from the breakdown of larger plastic objects). Collectively, all of these strategies help reduce leakage of low-value, single-use products.

Although several strategies have been proposed to reduce environmental contamination by microplastics from wastewater, reduction at source appears to be the most effective method.