Posted on 10/30/2011 10:39:17 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Environmental regulators walked gingerly along the San Leandro shoreline Friday, keeping a sharp eye out for the elusive wildlife killer known as the "nurdle."
"I've got one," said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, after scooping one out of a worker's net. There, in his palm, was a tiny white pellet.
Nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic that are melted down and used in the production of plastic bags, bubble wrap, packaging and wrapping material. They may sound cuddly and nonthreatening, but they are believed to be responsible for the sickness and death of thousands of fish and birds in the region that have mistaken them for food.
The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, State Water Resources Control Board and the EPA have targeted four San Leandro plastic manufacturers in a first-in-the-nation effort to halt the rampant spillage of the pellets, hundreds of thousands of which have washed into storm drains that flow into San Francisco Bay.
"It's a very big problem," Blumenfeld said during Friday's first mandated nurdle cleanup operation at Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro. "We're looking at the practices of companies that have a great deal of these nurdles and we're making sure they are contained."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
So now Nurdle the Turdle is girdled and kirtled?
what we didn’t see is them placing them in the water for the photo op.
they should go to prison for this bs.
“Nurdles” are much more touchy-feely than harsh-sounding “pellets.” Even California’s toxins must be PC!
According to the article, there is a giant collection of plastic garbage/soup twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. (You can’t see it in satellite pictures though, because plastic is translucent.)
How do they know that garbage did not float there from CHINA?
By any chance were they speaking of styrofoam packing peanuts? I have never seen a loose “nurdle” in my life, and if they are the raw form of plastic bags and such I do not know why a company would waste any.
Sounds like something from Dr. Seuss...
Good question. They must have checked their nurdle DNA. /s
I didn’t say they didn’t exist, I said I’d never before this heard of a US company wasting any, particularly in such a way they could get loose on the ground or in the water. Of course they would be bad news if eaten by sufficiently small critters.
I hope the nurdle Nazis don’t come to Texas. My brother in law works for a company that makes that stuff. Seems like the environmentalists are trying to make plastics the DDT of the 21st century.
Don’t waste your nurdles and you should be ok... I mean how is the common consumer ever going to get nurdles?
What BS...
I never waste mine. I feed any extras I have to endangered baby birds.
I just can’t wait for thier reaction to the tsunami debris mass thats heading for California. Should be fun
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