Freshwater Scarcity and the Microplastics Threat

In this urgent and eye-opening episode of our video podcast, we delve into two of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time: the world's dwindling freshwater resources and the pervasive problem of microplastics in our water.

Our journey begins with an in-depth exploration of the global freshwater crisis. We discuss the alarming rate at which the world's freshwater sources are being depleted, highlighting regions most affected by water scarcity. The conversation includes insights from environmental scientists and water conservation experts, offering a comprehensive understanding of the causes, impacts, and potential solutions to this critical issue.

Shifting focus, we then tackle the complex and concerning topic of microplastics in water. Microplastics, tiny plastic particles that pervade our oceans, rivers, and even drinking water, pose a significant threat to marine life and human health. We unravel the science behind microplastics - how they are formed, how they end up in our water, and the potential risks they pose.

In an effort to provide a holistic view, we also discuss the role of governments, industries, and individuals in contributing to and alleviating these environmental pressures. The episode highlights innovative technologies and grassroots initiatives that are making strides in water conservation and reducing plastic pollution.

The episode concludes with actionable steps that viewers can take to be part of the solution. We provide practical tips on water conservation, reducing plastic use, and supporting policies and practices that protect our water resources.

This podcast episode is not just a discussion but a call to action, urging viewers to become informed and engaged in the fight to preserve our planet's most precious resource: water. Tune in for an informative and inspiring journey into the heart of two of the most critical environmental issues facing us today.

FreshwaterCrisis, Microplastics, EnvironmentalPodcast, WaterConservation, PlasticPollution, SustainableLiving, EcoAwareness, GlobalEnvironment.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Going Green podcast. And today we're going to have a look at water, various aspects of water, where it comes from, is it safe to drink, and are we going to run out of water? I had a chat with one of my students. We were looking at where water comes from, and I asked this student, I said to her, "Where's your water come from?" She said the tap. A gasp. Yeah. So I pushed her a little bit more on this. Well, I said, "Yeah, but where does it come from before the tap?" She said, "Oh.""Get it from the supermarket in bottles." Yes. And at that point I was sort of almost sort of crying and wondering sort of, how could students not really know where water comes from? Here in the UK, most of our water comes from rivers. We do purify it, and we'll talk about that as we go along. But not all countries get their water from rivers. Britain is an island. We have a lot, well, quite a lot of rain, especially at the moment. And a lot of that water then we store in reservoirs and we get our water from these reservoirs and from the rivers. But other countries, well, they've got different problems. Yeah. It depends on, definitely, of course, if you're close to a river, that's where you eat your water from. If you're far away from a river, you've got to get it from, I say, other places. And one of the places they do go and get it from are what is known as groundwater aquifers. And essentially all they're doing is they're pumping water, as in clean water, from the ground, as in from the water table in the ground and pumping it up. And one of the major things they're not suffering from having a crisis is, of course, all the groundwater that they've been pumping out is unfortunately not being replaced. As in, you know, if you look at it, in and out of the aquifer, there is no water, much water flowing into it, and they're pumping more and more water out of it. So the aquifers are drying up, which of course leads to a sort of the first world problem or a problem for the first world, at least what the preferred world has, and don't get over it, is of course lack of water security or lack of water. Now, this is not a major thing here in the UK, because of course, as I said, we've got lots of streams and lots of rivers, and we go into the reservoirs, and we've got a very good water collection system, but I'm talking a lot of other places. They don't. And one of the solutions they have for all these problems is I know, especially in Israel, they use a lot of desalination, as in they pump seawater, and basically they get rid of all the salt from the seawater, and then obviously there's water to drink and use and all sorts of things. So yeah, there's plenty of seawater that go around, especially with the rising sea levels, but we'll glance over that lovely message. But what actually happens is if the water isn't in taps, then basically it goes to a live, lovely plant, as in a plastic bottle making plant. They're not making any water, you see, because they're just gaining tap water. They claim all sorts of funny things, how they filter it and get it, but no, they're just getting tap water. They just make plastic bottles. And of course, then they distribute that and sell the bottled water, claiming, and one of the major claims, of course, is all these places claim it's been filtered through and they've sourced it from all sorts of places. And the only way to do that, of course, is if the bottled water plant is nearby, that when you could be, you know, that's, you know, some glacier or some mountain, you know, like here, if we bought a bottle of water plant for our stream, we could say it's been going through the chalk stream water or, you know, because that's just happened to be our stream we get. Anyway, so these plastic bottle companies, of course, then collect the water, they sell the water, and of course, redistribute now. Yeah, well, there's an interesting thing about that. So, Paul, how much does petrol cost? Well, it depends on what the litre, but the light. Yeah, right, per liter. Currently, it's 137. And Paul, how much would you play for a liter of bottled water? Well, I know, I know it's sort of nearly, it's about, um, off a ball, 199. I was gonna say two pound, yeah, 199, sort of price, yes. So, bottled water seems to be costing more than petrol. Right, okay, so let's, let's wind back and let's ask a simple question. Where does our water come from? And effectively, our water comes from rain. So, the sea heats up, the water evaporates, the clouds form, they then move over the land, and precipitation occurs, and that water falls down onto the earth. Now, if you've watched rainfall, what happens is it then soaks into the ground. Where does it go from there? Well, as it soaks down into the ground, the ground is made from different sorts of rocks, and there are basically two sorts of rocks. There are porous rocks that absorb water, and there are impervious rocks that don't. And if you've got some porous rocks on top of impervious rocks, then that water collects in there. And as it rains more, so this groundwater level gradually rises. And if you live near us and the River Thames, we were watching the River Thames over the last few weeks rise and rise and rise. The stream was starting to flow, well, when we talk about the stream, it's the rate of water flowing down the mighty River Thames, and it's getting faster and faster, but there's a limit to how fast the water can actually go. And so, at that point, the groundwater is really high, and the Thames starts to flood. And we go to a sailing club, and we were gradually watching our sailing club get closer and closer to the river until it was in the river. If you'd been up in a helicopter or drone taking pictures, you'd have seen this little house from the air sitting in the river. You wouldn't believe that it was normally sitting on the edge. Now, we weren't too worried because it's got a sacrificial ground floor. It's got a rather wet sacrificial ground floor. I will be honest at the moment. And the water level has gone back down again, although I think it's on the rise when we last had a look at it. But yeah, as I said, those are normal water river course things. So this water in the River Thames, what's going to happen to it? Well, what we can do is we can feed this into a reservoir, or we can just have it flowing through the river. Now, I want some water. So what we do is we divert some of that water. And Paul, you know what the River Thames is like. You've not swam in it voluntarily. I know. I've had the pleasure of tasting it. And the River Thames, it's very sedimentary, as in it's got a lot of high water, sand and all sorts of things. Of course it's got water in it. I know it's got water. But what I'm saying is more, it's it's crystal clear, isn't it? It's a good mud brown. Yeah, yeah. It really is sort of rather sort of muddy. But that's because of course it's bringing in, as I said, water erosion, all the stuff coming from it. Anyway, so the water, the actual water, you take it, you know, grab a bucket, you pick it up and sort of see how much stuff's in there. And the answer is, well, you've got to get rid of all the particles. You just want the water. We don't want all the sand because I don't know about you, but I don't like really having gritty water. You know, it's not my favorite thing. Barely bad when you go to the scene, it's sort of sea water tasting. Yeah. Anyway, so they gather this water and they let it basically keep it still in a reservoir and let all the sediment sink down. That's why we use reservoirs as a basically, it's got a sedimentation tank, but bear in mind, some of these sedimentation tanks, they are miles across. Yes. You know, not a small thing. And that basically is to get rid of all that stuff. So now we've got relatively, not clear water, but relatively clear water. I go for clear water. It's not good water. It's not good water. This is, you know, it's not not been cleaned or anything like all it is is just all the large particulates particles have basically fallen through, through via gravity, pulled down to the bottom where the water lights are in, it flows. And so, so one of our reservoirs close by actually is going to be cleaned, isn't it? Yes. Just, just, just one of those boring matter of fact, they're given, they've given the order to sort of, it's been draining, you know, because I have no water been pouring it and some basically being used up. And then eventually it's going to be cleaned. It's going to be dredged, all that sort of silt and mud and whatever in particular, it's all going to be scooped out and basically, I think it's going to be put on a farm or something. Oh yes. Yeah. Good fertilizer. Anyway, so, so they, they go through these cleaning thing processes and cleaning things, these are the normal reservoir style activities that happen. Not are. Okay. So we've now got relatively looking clean water. What we're going to do with that. So that then goes to a water treatment works down a pipe and it arrives in another tank. And this other tank has a layer of gravel at the top underneath that some sand underneath that, uh, some other things often activated charcoal. And sometimes it's in one tank or several tanks and the water goes in the top and it comes out down the bottom. And basically everything in the water is then removed. And so now we've got some pretty clear water. It's, it's got rid of virtually everything behind all this filtration is of course, as I said, the filter out all the nasties as in all that stuff that were very small particles, as opposed to large particles. And we can add some chemicals to this, can't we? And then once of course, you've got all those things that you know, you've got really clear filtered water. It is then now you've got to kill everything that you can't filter out. This is like micro bacteria, microorganisms bacteria, all the lovely, lovely germs exist there. And you know, phytopanks and all sorts of other algae stuff. Yeah. It's, as I said, goes through and we do that and we treat it with, I say chemicals here in the UK. We actually clean it with chlorine, not this ring gas, but yeah. So we put chlorine in there. So that that's good. Some people don't like the taste of chlorine and they seem to be very sensitive to this. And we'll deal with those people in a moment. Sometimes we use ozone going through and we use UV light. And what comes out in the UK is perhaps some of the cleanest water we would argue in the world. So most of it, as I said, is it safe to drink? And that's the idea behind it as in, you know, it's then nicely there and you can actually eat sanitary if that makes any sense. Which I think is what's, what's helping all those things. Anyway, but in other countries, of course, at that point in the cycle, they don't put any more chemicals in. But as I said, that is what is fed out. That is what's fed out the tap. That is exactly what goes through. And of course, as the water goes through the pipes, it depends what sort of pipes you've got. We used to have years ago, lead pipes. And this was really good for passing on and picking up lead sort of nanoparticles and passing them on to people. And they suffered lead poisoning, which wasn't particularly good for them. We've got rid of all of those. We've got a lot of copper pipes and some copper does leach out, but it's a very small amount and a little bit of copper is actually not too bad for you. The answer is it's much better for you than the lead. And one of the major things, of course, here in the UK used to only have a host and cold taps and they were sort of, you can only drink the cold tap as opposed to the hot tap. And that was because usually the hot taps were still made of lead and the couple of the drinking ones were made of copper, so they were safer. They've been slowly transitioning to all copper pipes, dealing with lead pipes. But in lots of other countries, they still have got a lot of lead pipes and they have the system of you've got your hot water tap, your non-drinking water, which seems hilarious and sort of the same water. But then you've got actual clear water from you can drink from the cold tap, which of course is because that's for a copper pipe and so nice and healthy non- leaded pipes. You see in some buildings that they sort of have their water and they sort of label it as sort of non-drinking water because they can just collect fresh water from the rain and use that to flush toilets and for washing hands and a few other bits and pieces. Sometimes we've got our water, mains water as it is, and it comes in through the cold tap and that might serve downstairs and perhaps upstairs and a few other things. And sometimes we then put that water into a cold water tank in the roof. We've got one, it's about the size of a coffin really, ours, and that will supply another tank on the next floor down, which is heated. And so that's our hot water tank and that water is more stored. And having had a look at an old hot water tank that we've had in our house, it was sort of 50% not water, but 50% of that was actually then calcium carbonate. We live where we do in an area of high chalk and the water that comes to us goes first of all through the ground. It then dissolves and picks up some sort of calcium carbonate and then it goes into the river and a lot of that calcium carbonate actually still stays in the river. It makes it brilliant, our chalk streams, for growing things like watercress and we're famous for growing of our watercress, but it's quite healthy actually to drink. Yeah, the strong teeth and healthy bones. Yes, the answer is the reason we get strong water, hard water as they call it, is because of course during all the filtration process, you can't remove all that sort of dissolved, you know, something else. That's why we don't do desalination in regards to salt water, is because getting rid of salt out of water is very much harder than you might expect in regards to sort of, you know, that's why desalination plants are really expensive and have a terrific amount of energy required to actually make fresh water from seawater. That's why it's easier to just collect fresh water from various sources, wherever, and actually then go through. One of the major problems with all the dealing with all this fresh water we stated is actually the source of it as in where it's going, because of course, you know, not only do we need fresh water to drink, but of course we are currently using that fresh water, that clean purified water for heating, for bathing, and doing all sorts of things with it. But, you know, if you're just thinking of we just need clean water to drink as in, you know, for public safety, but do I really need to shower in this sort of nice, clean drinking water, or could it be done, as I said, with what is called grey water, which is rain. You know, you can't get any cleaner than rain, but not... Well, yeah, I don't like to say that rainwater is really nice and pure, is it? It's sort of got a few extra things in it, like sulfuric acid and nitric acid and carbonic acid. Why do you think they call it grey water, not clean water? Yeah. So one of the major things that we eventually are moving on to is of course we've got your nice clean water and you store it in a plastic bottle while you're drinking. And a couple of studies I have found, you see, that in the bottle, depending on, I say, how long it's stored in the bottle, but we're talking probably, you know, on average it takes probably three months to get from, you know, tap, as in through the bottle plant, to store to you drinking it on average. You know, that's why you have best before labels, have it drank. And essentially is that, like the leaded pipes, we're contaminating lead in the drinking water. We're finding that the plastic is actually not dissolving, but it is flaking off into and leaching into that bottle of water and leaving all these microplastics in the water that we are now drinking. Yeah, we're finding all sorts of microplastics all over the place. You know, the problem with plastics is of course they do not just away, but they do. Yeah. So let's ask a simple question. What's a plastic bottle actually made from? And someone also would say, well, it's made from plastic. But in fact, as well as just having the plastic, this poly, whatever it's going to be, there are lots of other additives added to it. Plasticizers, things to help the plastic stay more plastic and take on some extra properties. And over time, these leach out into the water. So you can have your bottled water. You can store it in a metal container. You can store it in certain types of plastic, which are really quite good. Or you can use those cheap bottles that you find in the supermarkets and you then sort of drink and throw away. And it's those that often have these extra plasticizers added to them. And what happens to those, as Paul says, these nanoparticles, they're really, really small. They dissolve in the water. And you're lucky enough that when you get your bottled water, you drink it. Now, some people also don't like chlorine. So often these things don't have chlorine in them. They're just natural spring water. And people don't like the chlorine. So they get rid of it. That means there can be quite a lot of bacteria in there. So one thing we're finding is that bottled water contains perhaps a lot of plastic nanoparticles. And over the years, we've been looking at studies doing this. And we're now finding there's about 100 times more plastic nanoparticles than they used to be, or that we previously thought, because our experiments, our detections got that much better. So more and more plastic and perhaps no chlorine. One of the experiments I do with my students is we take bottled water and we take clean water. We put it on an agar plate and we leave it to grow. And we see what bacteria we've got. And as I said, this is why in the UK we do chlorinate our water after we cleaned it. Because how much have I got in my clean tap water? And the answer is there's nothing in it. There's nothing living in it. There's nothing there. Whereas of course, if you don't chlorinate it after you've cleaned it, of course you're then putting in and you say, "Oh, if it's clean, therefore there's nothing in it to grow." And the answer is, the answer is, you might kill it, but you've got to kill all of it. It is a hard thing. We're not talking sort of directly unsolved, but it is, you can't filter everything. If filtering is sort of, if 99% efficient, well you still got 1%. And that's quite a lot to deal with. But yes, the people found that sort of bottled water eventually, not like grows algae, will grow algae on its own. The answer is, how the hell does that happen? And the answer is, the algae was in there. It was in there in the first place. So yeah, but this is, as I said, more of a, I say a first of all, problem in relation to water. But it is this idea of not contamination, but you either give it clean or you clean it later and make sure it's clean. And places are not struggling to do this, but they sort of barely have enough water to actually pump out places. They don't really care whether it's how clean it is. So let me ask you a question, Paul. You're the chemist. Are nanoparticles harmful to someone's health? The hard question is, we don't, the instant thing is say, we don't know. And that's because we've only been discovering them for the last, what, five, maybe 10 years. It's just where our methods of actually detection of increasing got better. And so we're only now able to see them. And slowly we're looking at older water studies and sort of, samples and actually finding the, and basically all these nanopathors existed beforehand. We just never discovered, seen them. And so we are now sort of being contaminated by all these plastics, which of course inerts, you know, it's going to take sort of millions of years for it to break down. And so we just essentially just filling up with all this plastic, which is not very good, not very good for the environment, not very good for everybody. But you know, just unfortunately, which is where we're trying to move plastics into this biodegradable sense where instead of taking eternity to buy, to degrade enough where you could say it's not plastic anymore, it's, it can be done rather rapidly. And one of the major things of course, is to make it dissolves in water, which has its own minor problems. Of course, if it goes, if the plastic goes outside, well, it's wet and humid, well it dissolves. So then, and it could be in the groundwater then. And then you get those in the groundwater because it's all full of, you know, which is not what you want at all. So it's in sort of, yeah, but that's a whole discussion on plastic design and plastics, sort of, manufacturers try to work out how to create or get rid of these agents that leak or not leach out of the water, because you always get leaching out of things. There's just friction of wearing through, you know. But the issue is you've got to find safe things or if safe goes into things, they're not going to do any damage because that's one of the things where they just, we don't know the contamination, we don't know the damage, except we can look at it and basically go, well, this stream was once nice. It is now, let's say downstream of a wastewater pipe and now it's not living anymore and there's a sort of, not pool, but you've got this nice safe bit and then past the drain pipe it's not. And so there is that issue in regards, you know, there's a whole, as I said, you mentioned it probably other poultry house before is we've got sewage problems as in sewage discharge and they sort of not doing so well. You know, and we got lots of inputs where they now use very clever clams, actual clams, you know, and they've mounted sort of a spring and sensor. And of course, when it's nice, clear water, the rope and so the sense is not the same thing in clothes, but when it gets a bit, any bit of pollution, they close and the sensor on, on the clamp, they've actually super glued it on, no clams are harmed. And it basically then sends a signal saying, you know, stop pumping in water from the source or from where we're getting from, because it's polluted and contaminated. And then it goes, passes through and then the clams slowly open up and then they suck in all the nice fresh water. Very clever system that they're using clam power. I say they're biosensors. They're not really biosensors. It's more like, um, you know, they're just clams. They're just clams. You know, it's sort of, you know, what, why, why pay for expensive, um, uh, measuring system or a clam is cheap and effective and it just does it. I said, clam power. So let's go back and answer one little important question. Should you drink bottled water? And the answer is it really does depend on the bottle. And if it's a hard plastic, then it's probably better. And sometimes it might be even better to actually fill your bottle from the tap and use it again and again and again, saves on the plastic waste and you're getting safer water to drink. So that might be one answer because here in the UK, we've got some of the cleanest water in the world. Other places, if the water isn't so clean, then you are forced to go water bottled water. But then looking at what sort of plastic it's in can make a world of difference to you. And there are these things that will filter water and they're not too bad. They will filter lots of things out, but can they filter out the micro bacteria and some of the viruses? And even the nanoparticles that are filled in, yeah, in the system. The answer is, as I said, filtration is hard. You know, I say it's a whole science process in itself. The last question I'm going to answer is we've talked about nanoparticles and I'm just going to tell you how big a nanoparticle is. And the answer is it can be slightly bigger than an atom and it can go right up to the size of about a few millimeters. Huge range and we can filter out much of that. Can we filter out something nearly the size of atoms? And the answer to that one Paul is no, because otherwise we won't get any water. So there we are. Water. Are we running out of it? Well, that very much depends on where you are. And it's not so much are we running out of water, is are we running out of clean, safe water to drink? In some countries like the UK we've got excellent water. Some countries have quite good bottled water, but I think it's let the buyer beware. Thank you for listening to the Going Green podcast. We'll be back next time with another item on Going Green. Until then, it's goodbye from me. And a goodbye from me. Bye bye. Bye.