{"id":39331,"date":"2021-11-29T16:15:48","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T07:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/nov\/29\/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous"},"modified":"2021-11-29T16:15:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T07:15:48","slug":"nurdles-the-worst-toxic-waste-youve-probably-never-heard-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=39331","title":{"rendered":"Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you\u2019ve probably never heard of"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Billions of these tiny plastic pellets are floating in the ocean, causing as much damage as oil spills, yet they are still not classified as hazardous<\/p>\n<p>When the X-Press Pearl container ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean in May, Sri Lanka was terrified that the vessel\u2019s 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil would spill into the ocean, causing an environmental disaster for the country\u2019s pristine coral reefs and fishing industry.<\/p>\n<p>Classified by the UN as Sri Lanka\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/postconflict.unep.ch\/Sri%20Lanka\/X-Press_Sri%20Lanka_UNEP_27.07.2021_s.pdf\">\u201cworst maritime disaster\u201d<\/a>, the biggest impact was not caused by the heavy fuel oil. Nor was it the hazardous chemicals on board, which included nitric acid, caustic soda and methanol. The most \u201csignificant\u201d harm, according to the UN, came from the spillage of 87 containers full of lentil-sized plastic pellets: nurdles.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/nov\/29\/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Billions of these tiny plastic pellets are floating in the ocean, causing as much damage as oil spills, yet they are still not classified as hazardousWhen the X-Press Pearl container ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean in May, Sri Lanka was t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1676,2437,1650,65,2002,468,467,266,466,1980,61,674,2436,1090,94,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cetaceans","category-coastlines","category-dolphins","category-environment","category-fish","category-marine-life","category-oceans","category-plastics","category-pollution","category-shipping-industry","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-travel-and-transport","category-water-transport","category-wildlife","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/461"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39332,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39331\/revisions\/39332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}