UBC device uses wood dust to trap up to 99.9 per cent of microplastics in water | Hacker News Reader

UBC device uses wood dust to trap up to 99.9 per cent of microplastics in water

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194 pointsBrajeshwar112 comments

There is a researcher named John Todd whose work has been able to break down DDT in a matter of weeks.

In this video, he gives a talk about some various projects. In the first one, he uses these methods to clean up a site contaminated with the top 15 pollutants (at least at the time). Heavy metal were sequestered by algea; 14 of the 15 toxins were below detectable levels, and the 15th was reduced by 99.999%; solids were eaten by armored carp. The output is drinking standard water, and it takes 10 days for the contaminated water to flow through the system.

The key design principle is putting many species across all five kingdoms, from different biomes, and they start self-organizing around the pollutants. The resulting communities break down the pollutant, but are all new.

https://youtu.be/SeQotnmhO5I

In a different interview, he talks about microplastics — and while he has not worked on it, he believes a solution can be found in incorporating all five kingdoms. So not just sequestering them, but breaking them down so they can be useful in the ecosystem again.

I've never heard of armored carp. Googling for it leads to info on Breath of the Wild or Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.

Finally, 35 or 45 entries down I found a reference to an armored catfish. https://a-z-animals.com/animals/armored-catfish/pictures/ I hadn't heard of that, either, but I wonder if that's what you mean.

The video referenced armored catfish. There are multiple species known as armored catfish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_catfish

I think my brain inserted “carp” in place of “catfish”. I too have put in some hours with Breath of the Wild

I had the reverse of that happen.

Was looking for advice on farming Aeonian Butterflies in Elden Ring, but delightfully stumbled across the fact Aeonian butterflys are actually a species of South American butterfly apparently.

https://gardeninginside.com/where-to-find-aeonian-butterflie...

I couldn't stop laughing.

I have no idea. It was mentioned in the video I linked.

Looks like an unsung hero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Todd_(Canadian_biologist)

Are his books good? If so I'll order a copy of Healing Earth for the library.

One of the books I tried reading, reads like something non-scientific with a liberal sprinkling of mysticism. I personally don’t mind that, but it overshadows the science for people coming in from that way. It’s why I looked for talks that sounds more structured and coming from scientific principles.

This is a different video. If you know what it is going on, it’s interesting. It makes for a poor introduction to his work, let alone the significance: https://youtu.be/8_bxxUub9HU

Tldr: branding sucks, and it’s a shame more people don’t know what he and his colleagues have been up to.

I should probably watch the video, but does he mention anything about dioxin? This has been the main source of pain for my father and his colleagues building sea food farms.

He didn’t talk about any specific toxin by name. It is only a 24 min talk.

It can be tested though through this system though. The last project had not been deployed at the time of this video (2016), but it was a proposal for a design for marinas. Here, he and his colleagues are thinking of smaller, distributed system (miniaturized eco-machines deployed at each dock). He has also experimented with floating systems in rivers, and the Four Season resort system deployed in Hawaii works to cleanup saltwater.

With farms — like any farm, on land or on sea — looking at it as an ecosystem which yields something useful as a byproduct (rather than a system that maximizes extraction) tends to result in a system that is more resilient. That is, the commercial product is a useful byproduct of restoring the ecosystem. Todd’s eco-machine adds additional ecosystems to assist the ecosystem you are trying to restore.

That video changed my life

If you ever feel comfortable sharing that story, I’m interested in hearing it.

For me, I came across John Todd’s work from the podcast, Permaculture for the Future. It was part of a much larger toolkit and solutions we already have for healing our land and our home. Since deep diving into all of that, I don’t feel like I am drowning in what looks like the slow destruction of Earth, even as we are seeing more and more extreme weather events.

I feel like we keep hearing about technologies like this that are going to change the world but none of them ever actually get implemented... just me?

There are already stuff like this that has been deployed - John Todd’s Eco-Machines: https://youtu.be/SeQotnmhO5I

These projects have not made it to the media, but they are there. We’re talking about EPA-funded works, and other sites around the world.

The guy designing and deploying says it is simple enough that students can construct a small scale version.

"business people" will pretty much only allocate resources to endeavors that are financially profitable for themselves and these same people quite often provide financial incentives to politicians who promise to advocate for policies that result in additional profitability for the business people regardless of the environmental or social consequences. Those elected politicians need to be replaced and the capacity for the "business people" to influence elected officials with financial contributions should be limited and involve mandatory transparency. No more unlimited dark money pools.

the above solution is silly expensive.

Expensive doesn’t mean that somebody is greedy, it means that it takes a lot of effort from a lot of people - effort that could probably be spent more effectively.

Equating expensive with valuable, while very much in line with rules coming from Economics 101, is very questionable in real life in my experience.

If talking about costs bothers you, just think of it in terms of time efficiency. We have a limited number of humans and time available to clean up the planet. What's the most effective way to use them?

This isn't.

As with just about everything else, it's a whole lot easier to build a proof-of-concept prototype than it is to solve the problem at scale. New technologies often have either inherent limitations that make it infeasible for them to scale up (e.g. use of fragile or hard-to-manufacture materials, square-cube issues, outsized cleaning/maintenance requirements) or would simply have a staggering cost at any scale that makes a practical difference.

If it's just tech, it's always too expensive, it has to be bacteria or alage or some other bio stuff that multiplies by itself to be useful.

I mean, this is like the moon landing — private companies can build the technology, but it's not going to get deployed at scale unless a government sponsors it, because there's not a clear path to profit.

And like, is congress going to spend $10B deploying this at scale? That would be great, but they can't even pass a budget.

Not just you. Just sensationalist headlines (:

See also the dramatic groundbreaking new battery technologies that have keep getting reported for the last 30+ years. [1]

Not only is there a long lead time between proof-of-concept and scalable production even in the best case, but frequently these nascent technologies have serious drawbacks that aren't mentioned in the article.

[1] "Revolutionary battery checklist": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025930

also: https://xkcd.com/882/ and https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623

I like how we all now know that microplastics and PFAS seriously contaminate our water sources, but there's no real thought about things like nanotubes doing the same thing. Wonder what consuming carbon nanotubes might do to us.

Unless there is something special about carbon chains, ingesting them is probably like ingesting activated carbon. Ingested activated carbon is part of a treatment for poison. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon

Inhaling it though, is a really bad idea.

Well yeah it's a whole different shape (very pointy and can penetrate or shred cell membranes), and the electrical properties of graphene can be pretty weird.

Not the same but some people have experimented with C60 spheres. Apparently it is either very good or it increases ROS reactive oxygen species depending on who you ask and how it is prepared

Probably nothing, just like microplastics.

I was wondering this literally yesterday... are there any current methods for filtering out microplastics? Currently I just have a filter within my fridge for drinking water... but I take it that doesnt do much

The simple carbon filter in your fridge should suffice. Sub micron microplastic (nanoplastics) have not been detected yet, and their sustained existence remains speculative.

If you are still worried, just install a reverse osmosis system. It also has the benefit of filtering away sub-nanometer particles that are actually proven to have negative health effects (such as heavy metals and bacteria).

When microplastics break down they get smaller and become nanoplastics.

Nanoplastics have been detected.

Here is a paper that shows how to measure nanoplastics. Dilute solutions with polystyrene particles from 400nm down to 40nm were prepared and measured.

Demineralized water was put in a polystyrene cup. Microplastics were removed and the remaining nanoplastics were measured. A concentration of ~10^12 particles/l was found.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/en/d0en0...

They've been detected in a synthetic lab condition, but not in the wild.

In the paper, the nanoplastics were measured in demineralized water that had been sitting in a regular disposable polystyrene cup (like the ones that people drink coffee from) for five minutes.

So the measurement reflects the nanoplastics that one ingests when drinking a cup of coffee from a polystyrene cup.

Because nanoplastics sizes are of the order of the wavelength of visible light, the particles were measured with fluorescence microscopy.

Nanoplastics were also found in high concentrations in store bought plastic bottles of mineral water as well as in water that had been sitting in baby bottles.

It'd be a bit weird if they weren't in the wild though, wouldn't it?

The point is that their half life in the wild is so short that their presence is negligible.

One thing to be aware of, is some filters system have been found to introduce microplastics. I think it’s primarily the container/piping that does this, but it’s been a long while since I’ve looked at things. It’s not unreasonable to consider the filter housing also as a source.

carbon filters do filter out quite a bit, but not all, so it's hardly "not much". A quick search will show you filtering down to 1-5um sizes

I have a reverse osmosis system for my well water that filters out both PFAS and micro plastics.

I guess it's not possible to design a tea bag that's not made out of plastic but that can also survive the boiling hot temperatures?

No, that's very possible. The problem is our obsession with making everything single-serve and disposable. I think this is what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=stainless+steel+tea+infuser+ball

It's an obsession with convenience, which doesn't have to mean single-serve or disposable. Loose leaf tea is slightly less convenient. It's very hard to argue with people to give up convenience, but if you can figure out how to make loose-leaf tea easier than bags I think people will do it.

Also, there are some cost and shelf life concerns: https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/a-steep-dilemma-tea-ba...

Also, apparently here's some stats about loose-leaf vs bagged tea: https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1093592/preference-for-te...

You can even get them built in to a nice little pot. I had this one for a while https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LZSA84J

Tea bags used to be made of fabrics such as cotton, silk, etc, it's not like we don't know how to make them without plastic.

They're still frequently made out of paper.

In the UK it would be very unusual for it not to be made out of paper, I was shocked when I visited the US

On a related note, today’s paper straws are apparently covered in PFAS, even though paper straws existed way before plastic was commonly used.

I assume you could just coat the straw in food grade wax, but for some reason that’s not commonly done.

I can only imagine food grade wax being way more expensive than PFAS type chemicals. Probably easier to apply as well. Just thinking of all the "reasons" companies would state as to why they justify poisoning us all.

PFAS will potentially put 3M out of business just like talcum powder did to J&J.

J&J still exists and will continue to exist though? They settled for some 9 billion, which is a lot but not enough to sink a company with a ~400 billion market cap.

400 billion market cap companies do not usually have 400 billion in liquidity laying around. And after the first bankruptcy there may now well be a second:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/jj-effort-resolve-talc-lawsuit...

As I understand it that link describes a plan to use the bankruptcy of a subsidiary (NOT the main company) as a way to resolve the court cases in one go. The subsidiary is funded with enough money to pay the expected settlements (with the parent company guaranteeing any shortfalls) and bankruptcy is used here as a legal tool rather than a "we are out of money" point. Matt Levine had a great section about this in his newsletter but I cannot find an un-paywalled link to that atm. It's the one from Jan 31 if you are subscribed.

According to their latest annual report (https://www.investor.jnj.com/asm/2022-annual-report, page 45), they had some 14.4 billion in "cash and cash equivalents" at the start of this year. Their net debt position was 16.1 billion on Jan 1 2023 (page 46 of the same report), up from 2.1 billion the year before due to an acquisition so there is likely quite some room to take on additional debt. Total net earnings for 2022 were just below 18 billion. Paying a 9 billion USD settlement will be painful for sure, but even double that would be just a single years' worth of profit. J&J is extremely likely to survive this problem IMO.

That subsidiary is just a legal trick. And this is exactly what J&J want you to believe.

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/10/20/the-texas-two-step-a...

> And this is exactly what J&J want you to believe.

Do you mean that they lied in their annual report about their profits and/or their current cash on hand? Or that the total legal costs will be much higher than the 9 billion settlement agreement?

Because I still don't see how a 9 billion settlement would bankrupt J&J, even if the subsidiary were to be reabsorbed into J&J tomorrow. They already set aside ~7 billion in Q1 2023 for this and have way deeper reserves available.

The settlement is limited to those cases that have been brought and they're trying to plug that hole with legal tricks. But so far the judge isn't buying it which means the parent company will be liable and if it is found to be liable after all you can count on many thousands more lawsuits. It will also remove the cap on settlements. You can expect J&J to take a massive hit on account of that, possibly more than the market will bear. Keep in mind during all of this that in order to fail as a commercial entity all that needs to happen is that you are momentarily out of cash. The vultures will swoop in right away to dismember the corpse looking for bargains.

My understanding is that all the covers of fast food (fries holder, hamburger wrapper, inside of paper soda cup) are also covered in PFAS — so far disposable coffee cups. Anything “paper” that is in contact with food, really.

Except for the traditional British fish-and-chips newspaper, but that one should have traditional lead-based ink for flavour.

Plastic tea bags are rare in Germany, although they are getting more popular. Tea bags are usually paper, apparently made from this plant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abac%C3%A1

Oh interesting, didn't know that! Interesting fiber. I always wondered why tee bags are so robust when wet. They feel so different too.

Also TIL: Manila hemp.. Manila envelope.. jupp, they were also made from that fiber up until some time ago.

I rarely see plastic tea bags here in the US (outside of Starbucks). Most use filter paper.

It's the same in the UK but those filter paper looking ones actually used to contain small amounts of plastic.

I believe most have transitioned away now... or, at least, the only brand that matters if you're British has transitioned[0]

[0] https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-news/plastic-in-tea-bags...

What? Tea bags were made of cotton and paper decades before plastic came about. Plastic was likely introduced to lower costs and extend shelf life.

Cheaper tea bags are made out of paper and they work just fine. Tetley, for instance.

Sadly they still contain plastic to seal them:

"We’ve worked hard to ensure that our tea bags are 99% bio degradable. However, as a result of the manufacturing process, Tetley tea bags do contain a very small amount of plastic to ensure the bags remain closed for you to enjoy your cup of tea."

https://www.tetley.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions

I just had a look at two of my non-Tetley teabags. They appear to be stitched closed with the end of the string. Why does it need plastic?

Edit: The quote from the FAQ mentions the bags being biodegradable, and this page [1] about their "new biodegradable bags" shows a photo of bags without strings. So maybe it's just these stringless (and presumably cheaper to manufacture?) bags that contain plastic?

The Twinings FAQ [2] doesn't mention plastic: "Our teabags are biodegradable, plant-based teabags and will break down within 6 months if placed into a local authority compost caddy, though it may not compost as quickly if left in garden compost (as typically these are not sufficiently hot)."

[1] https://www.tetley.co.uk/sustainability/product-and-packagin...

[2] https://twinings.co.uk/pages/faqs

Some teabags used to use a tiny metal staple for that (it also held the string on). Definitely do not need glue.

are tea bags even necessary? people managed drinking tea before plastic was invented

Perhaps as a profit center to the tea industry. Most tea bags contain the grades of tea that can't be sold in the more expensive loose leaf form. Basically leaf fragments and dust. That material would otherwise be a waste product.

It's also a benefit to the consumer in the option of cheaper tea - you can still have choose to pay more for loose leaf.

Are cars even needed? people walked before. Is any modern convenience needed? We can probably live in tents and use a bow and arrow to get our meals.

Environmental cost of using and washing a teapot is likely higher than that of using a teabag and brewing directly in the cup.

If you're washing your teapot, you're doing it wrong. A light rinse is enough. Over time a patina will build up on the inner walls of the pot, some say this makes the tea better.

I haven't reached this level yet, but I know people that have yixing clay teapots that are dedicated exclusively to a certain type of tea. The brew they get from their aged pu'erh tea gets better over time in that teapot with use.

Metal tea balls are also available to brew tea.

that seems extremely unlikely

I just weighed an empty teabag: 0.19g. I think it's highly likely that less than a gram of mass-produced paper has lower environmental cost than is needed to clean a whole teapot. You need hot water, and detergent, and the teapots are cleaned individually, so you have the overhead of heating intermittently used pipes etc. Teabags are a mature technology where production efficiency is highly optimized.

you need hot water or detergent, not both, and as another commenter mentioned, you don't need to wash the pot anyway. you're sterilising the thing every time you use it

teabags may well be a mature optimised technology, but they're releasing microplastics and that's worse than using 0.000% more energy, if you even are, which I doubt, when you factor in the additional weight required for transporting the bags, the transport of the wood for the paper, etc etc etc.

also, highly optimised does not mean highly optimised for the environment. where in Europe and parts of the America your energy supply may well be up to 40 or 50% renewables these days, or higher, you can be sure it isn't in the developing country your teabag was manufactured in. plus fumes, plus whatever land they stripped to plant the trees for the paper, if they're not cutting down old growth in the first place

I think it's a rounding error either way, but our pot for black tea only gets rinsed (usually cold), and our pot for herbal teas occasionally gets put inside the dishwasher. Not sure why you think teapots need to be washed individually.

I assume the environmental cost is dominated by other factors that apply in both cases: growing the plant, transporting the product, heating water to boiling temperatures.

why do you need hot water?

Because it's far more effective at cleaning than cold water.

but tea doesn't really even need detergent? a scrub and rinse for the pot is fine.

A Gaiwan is one traditional Chinese way of making tea, but those words are literally “covered bowl”. If you don’t want to buy one, you could makeshift your own: brew loose leaf tea in a cup or bowl and pour it into your drinking cup using a small plate.

believe it or not but it's OK to consume the tea leaves and drink slightly bitter tea ;). if you accept this the solution is just not to have tea bags at all. brew with the leaves and drink immediately, and if you forget, enjoy your bitterer tea!

You can also get a re-usable metal mesh infuser.

I eat kiwi skins too. The amount of pesticides used to grow them though means it's probably not the best idea

I LOVE kiwi with the skin on. I rub the fruit against my jeans or a tea towel first, then just eat like a pear. Really adds to the whole flavour (like how eating a pealed apple is nice, but a whole apple can be better.

wow, my mouth just reacted in a not pleasant way just from reading that.

You can also use a stainless steel infuser.

It's definitely possible, many tea bags do not contain plastics, and are instead made of cotton, hemp, or other non-hazardous materials.

Most tea bags are made of Manila Hemp (a banana plant). Many have a heat-sealable thermoplastic such as PVC or polypropylene on the inner tea bag surface as well, that you never feel or hear about

There are some survey reports on this out there that I have seen. It is common for more expensive teas, and ones labeled "organic" to be plant fibers only, but there are exceptions. If you want to figure it out on your own, you can take an empty teabag, briefly set it on fire and blow it out, then smell the smoke. Personally, I usually pour the contents into my cup or tea pot and throw out the teabag.

https://www.google.com/search?q=which+tea+bags+contain+plast...

Just transfer your tea out of the plastic tea sachets into a cotton filter. Coffee filter or they make small ones for loose leaf tea.

I would choose a different brand if the tea bags came as plastic and send them a nasty letter. I've been lucky enough to never have encountered them I guess.

Honestly I find some of the "nicer/high end" or even organic brands of tea sometimes use the plastic sachet, this is because that allows you to see the product inside whereas the other ones hide the product. The only brands I run across with it lately are Harney and Sons, and a Russian tea brand Maiskiy, but most Maiskiy bags are paper. And Harney and Sons is a nice treat.

what you want here is loose leaf tea

Now how do we get something like this to work (safely) inside our bodies to remove the microplastics embedded in our tissues?

I wonder if we could build a huge floating "island of plants" in the great pacific garbage patch?

This method is for microplastics. The garbage patch is not microplastics.

I thought most "garbage patches" in the ocean were actually made up mostly of microplastics.

I can't find a great source for this now, but a quick Google gave https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-paci... which says:

> Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.

"For many people, the idea of a 'garbage patch' conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.

"The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean" (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-paci...)

You should link the source if you're quoting stuff. (Posted below: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-paci...)

They probably didn't know that ChatGTP was just taking stuff wholesale from nationalgeographic.

This entire comment, FYI, is copy-pasted from this[0].

[0]https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-paci...

Probably slowly breaking down into microplastics though

Anybody want to drop in and burst my bubble? This sounds very promising!

Even if this doesn’t go anywhere (due to economics or funding or red tape or whatever), the best parts of this is we know people are actually working to resolve this issue and are making progress.

How does it perform in the real world, where water is contaminated with far more than microplastic - is this filter selective for plastic or will it get gummed up by literally anything?

Is the solution scalable? What does it cost?

I don't know how much you know about water filtration plants, but in the real world everything is a series of filters, each more fine-grained than the one before it. You would never use this on unfiltered ocean or waste water - it would be yet-another-stage in the filtration pipeline, after many of the others and possibly before a few more.

Hmm, well done sir

That bubble never had a chance!

There have been similar issues with this promising approach: https://www.freethink.com/environment/plastic-eating-bacteri...

Personally I often wonder why things like the seaweed for cows that reduces methane emissions by 99% is not everywhere by now, and we are resorting to masks to trap gases from their breathing and farts.

Sure. This will be a possible add on to home water filtering solutions for paranoid stay at home moms but will not be used at a large scale. Lakes and seas will get filled with more and more microplastics which will enter the foodchain from there.

Sure, it works in vitro. Call me when it's in vivo!

Can we not make it a requirement for all of these solutions to provide a small infobox about how much the prototype costs, how long it took to build, and some sort of scalability / feasibility index?

Anything can work at a small enough scale with enough budget and time.

Is this going to be a useful method of recycling?

Did anyone else misread the title? "USB-C [electrical] device uses wood dust to trap [...] [sic]"

IMO the title could do without "UBC".

Granted, it's a UBC promo piece.

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