30 March 2020
The coronavirus can survive several days on hard surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel. In the air, that’s three hours. This result of recent laboratory research raises the question of how to handle plastic packaging to prevent contamination.
American laboratory research has shown that the coronavirus can survive up to 72 hours on plastic and metal. This means that you can become infected if, for example, you touch a steel rod on the bus or something made of plastic.
Suppose something is delivered to you in a plastic wrapper. What do you have to do to make sure you are not infected by that packaging? There are basically three ways:
– Take the contents out of the packaging and wash your hands;
– Clean the packaging with disinfectant soap and hot water;
– Wait three days before touching the package.
Not only on plastic but on all packaging, the virus appears to be able to survive for a while. According to the research, this is a maximum of 24 hours for cardboard and 4 hours for copper. After just a few hours, the effectiveness of the virus decreases significantly.
Single-use plastic is no safer or unsafe than plastic that is used more than once. You can continue to use your own cups and trays, as long as you wash them well. Read more about this in this article by Upstream.
The lobby of the American plastics industry, the Plastics Industry Association, claims that the use of disposable packaging plastic is safer for our health. The Plastics Industry Association requested in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Social Affairs last week to emphasize this alleged safety in a public statement. Furthermore, the lobbying organization has asked the ministry to speak out against the ban on single-use plastic products (such as bags or straws).
Plastic producers are beginning to be affected by the measures aimed at restricting the use of disposable plastic; sales figures are under increasing pressure. In the United States, these measures are often implemented by municipalities. It seems that the plastics industry is taking advantage of the corona crisis to get all these measures off the table. Read Upstream’s response to this example of blatant lobbying in difficult times for all of us.
The European cosmetics industry is misleading consumers and governments. The industry stated in 2018 that the use of plastic microbeads had decreased by 97.6% and pledged that no more personal care products with plastic microbeads would be sold by 2020. However, such products are still offered for sale, according to scientific research.
Journalist Laura Hoogenraad has been researching the reuse of old, shredded carpets full of chemicals in horse riding arenas, and this is what she found out:
In children’s playgrounds, industrial waste full of toxic substances is being used as part of the “circular economy”.
For the first time, scientists have found microplastics in the placenta. Recent research has also shown that babies consume 1.6 million microplastics daily via food from plastic bottles.
A glimpse into the devious strategies of the plastics industry