FOOD, PACKS, POLYTHENE AND MATTERS ARISING
GHANA INSTITUTE OF JOURNALISM
IN-DEPTH JOURNALISM ASSIGNMENT
GROUP (7) SEVEN
GROUP IN- DEPTH STORY ON FOOD, POLYTHENE, PACKS AND MATTERS ARISING.
GROUP MEMBERS
Michael Kenetey Kofi
Emmanuel Kwame Donkor
Mabel Faith Tannor
Linda Akubila
Ernest Reagan Ayikpah
Boateng Erica
Grace Hammond Asiedu
Lilliana Owusu-Akyem
Theresa Nyarko
Eugenia Akweley Richman
John Tosenu Mensah
Thomas Agyekum Boateng
Apetorgbor Precious Fafa
Abigail Mensah
Akiti Emmanuel Nukunu
Eunice ohenewaa Effah
Polythene, Packs, Rubbers -Useful, “HARMFUL”, DEADLY?
The idea of carrying a plate, bowl or utensil from home to go buy food by the roadside is thought by many as “not smart”, “unnecessary”, “needless”, “painful”, “hectic”, even “foolish”.
Yes, I mean, if you think about it, it is, because you can simply walk freely, without stress to the food joints, only with your money, and get the same food in rubber or pack, and take your food “to go”, less stress and you would not have to walk carefully so that you do not spill the food if its soup.
Also you can eat straight from the pack and “throw it away”, without having to wash anything except your hand if you used your hands to eat the food.
So simply put, life with these plastics are quite fun and liberating. If it were some time ago, I would have agreed. However, my stance on the matter has last changed, since my team and myself researched and interviewed experts to write this article.
Hopefully, after you have read the whole of this article, yours would change too.
THE UNKNOWN HEALTH SCARE
In an interview with Dr Sari Soghoian, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine for Medical Toxicology at the Department of Medicine of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, she disclosed that, there were health effects of using plastics overtime.
She said there was good evidence now that exposure as a child was linked later on in life to problems like obesity, diabetes with all the risks of cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and kidney disease that come along with that, and common sensitive cancers like prostate cancer and breast cancer.
Dr Soghoian noted however that, as at now, there was no concrete research or finding that could tell one the dosage of plastic that one would have to consume to reach get the effects.
“But the question of exactly how much and how many packs of food one would need to eat to get that much, we cannot say. So we know that there are health effects but we cannot be very precise the way we can with pharmaceuticals like a drug, say paracetamol or something else we take like a blood pressure medication”, Dr Soghoian noted.
She also disclosed that with the effects of plastics on the human body were more chronic than acute, adding: “So in the emergency or immediate, we will never see acute poisoning from plastics, but it’s possible that many of the things that we see on daily basis are being accelerated in the population because of plastic activities”, she added.
Dr Soghoian said some chemicals called “plasticisers” that were added in order to make the product softer, more malleable were the danger with plastic products while cautioning that it was not only hot food that could have plastic leach into them but also cold food too, noting however that, the rate at which they leached, was probably minimal.
“The ones that people are most worried about these days, understanding that the research is continuing, are small molecules such as “phthalates”, and “bisphenols”, that helps make it soft. So by all means, things like polythene bags, rubbers, those softer containers, will have such compounds in them.”
Dr Soghoian noted that, these chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, meant they would disrupt hormones and metabolism, adding: “the smaller you are when you are exposed, the more likely that there would be an effect. So we particularly worry about exposure to babies and children.”
THE UNKNOWN AQUATIC DAMAGE
United States of America’s Cable News Network (CNN) reported on April 1, 2019 that, a “pregnant sperm whale” that washed up dead on a tourist spot in Sardinia, Italy, had forty-nine (49) pounds of plastics in its stomach. That is twenty-two (22) kilograms plastics.
If that is not evidence enough that the plastics we use on land end up in the ocean and are mistakenly fed on as food by the marine lives like fishes, turtles, whales, sharks, jelly fish, star fish, dolphins etc, then I do not know what will.
Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo, an Ex Sailor and Co-founder of Plastic Punch-environment and marine life protection advocates, disclosed in an interview that, about seventy per cent 70% of the world’s plastic waste ended up in the ocean.
Mr Quarcoo, noted that, these plastics were harming marine life in general but more so, the leatherback turtle, which were the predominant species of turtles found in Ghanaian oceans.
He said the turtles fed on jelly fishes, but for some reason, they are not able to distinguish between the jelly fishes and the plastics, so feed they fed on plastics adding that this was bad for the marine ecosystem.
“The jelly fishes feed on small fingerlings, and the turtles feed on the jelly fishes. Now if the turtles feed on the plastics thinking they are the jelly fishes, they die, when they die, the population of the jelly fishes are not controlled.
When that happens, the growing number of jelly fishes feed on all the fingerlings causing shortage of fingerlings. So when our fisherman go fishing we get low catch. So it upsets the balance in the food chain,” Mr Quarcoo added.
He said increasingly, there have been more dead turtles and even without establishing the actual cause death scientifically, it was very obvious by the number of plastic washed ashore that plastics were responsible.
Mr Quarcoo said in addition to that, the fishes the human population consumed also fed on plastics themselves, then later, humans’ consumed them, so in effect, humans were consuming plastics.
He added that there was a forecast that predicts more plastics in the world’s water bodies than fishes by the year 2025, if serious and strict measures were not taken to curb the plastic menace.
THE UNKNOWN ENVIRONMETAL CATASTROPHE
The Ghana National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) on Monday, April 8, 2019, disclosed that the heavy rains that poured the night before, however short, took five (5) lives in Accra because of the floods that ensued after the rains.
That was for just heavy rains that lasted for just about two (2) hours or a little more, so can you imagine what the damage would be if it rains any heavier and longer, which according to the Ghana Meteorological Agency, would be the case for the upcoming raining season.
The flood is the killer, but first let’s find out what causes the floods.
Mr Isaac Newton, a Senior Lecturer at the Ghana School of Hygiene of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, in an interview said, the hazards plastics posed were numerous.
He noted that constantly, when plastics were no longer needed, they were either burnt or thrown away and that these methods of disposing plastics, resulted in air, water and soil pollution.
Mr Newton said the littering also reduced rate of water movement, resulting in increasing an already high water stagnation in water logged areas and water paths in our cities.
This, according to him, were the cause of Ghana’s persistent flooding which led to loss of many lives and properties when there was a heavy rainfall, adding; “improper disposal of plastic leads to increasing sanitation issues, damage to the environment and blocked drains, which contributes to stagnant water accumulation”
Mr Newton noted that such water stagnation brought malaria transmitted by breeding mosquitoes and that malaria accounted for about sixty (60%) per cent of all outpatient department (OPD) cases nationwide according to records.
“When plastic is burned, it tends to release toxic chemicals like Carbon monoxide, Benzene, Ethylene oxide, Xylene, dioxins, furans, Bisphenol-A, Phthalates etc, some of which can trigger asthma, cause asphyxia, cause various cancers and many other health problems.
“Some of the chemicals in plastics may cause side effects such as decreased lung function, increased weight, and increased resistance to insulin, low sperm count, and DNA damage to sperm. Also affect the reproductive development of infant males, resulting in undescended testes, smaller scrotum and smaller penises”, Mr Newton stated.
He further opined that because the decomposition of plastics took between 100 and 400 years, the soil fertility deteriorates as the plastic bags and sachets form part of manure and remain in the soil for years.
Mr Newton said crops and plants roots found it difficult to penetrate the plastic in order to grow very well which led to low or no yield that adversely affect the nutritional status of the entire human population.
Mr Isaac Newton, who also served as the Acting Registrar for the Ghana Chapter of the West Africa Health Examinations Board (WAHEB), said if plastics were burnt, they increased greenhouse gas emissions, which contributed to global climate change.
THE SOLUTIONS RECOMMENDED BY THE EXPERTS
Dr Sari Soghoian, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine for Medical Toxicology at the Department of Medicine of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, said in an interview that Ghana had many sanitation laws that were not being implemented and enforced.
She said those laws must be enforced and the executive functions redeveloped to maintain proper sanitation and encourage consumers to use more reusable items for their food and water transport.
Dr Soghoian noted that even though there was a huge amount of plastic waste that could be recycled but were not in Ghana, it was her personal opinion that recycling was not an energy efficient solution but rather reducing the amount of plastic use was critical.
She urged communities, elders, opinion leaders in communities to set good examples and adopt good behaviors in their plastic use and disposal and call people out when they disposed plastic indiscriminately.
Also speaking in an interview, Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo, an Ex Sailor and Co-founder of Plastic Punch-environment and marine life protection advocates, said consumers had the power to reduce plastic waste by using reusable bags and containers.
He said if consumers stopped buying or creating a demand for them (plastic product), the manufactures would not also have the market for it and would also not produce.
Mr Quarcoo said it did not make sense to have plastics that would be use for some five minutes but would take about 100 to 400 years to degrade, so he urged government to ban the production and use of single-use plastics like polythene bags etc.
He said recycling was not an efficient way to deal with the plastic waste as among the world’s plastic waste, it was only ten (10%) per cent that could be recycled, so there was the need to massively cut down the use of plastics.
Mr Quacoo urged the citizenry to learn to segregate their plastic waste at home while calling for more education on the adverse effects of plastic wastes as a way to better inform people of the dangers posed by plastics.
Mr Isaac Newton, a Senior Lecturer at the Ghana School of Hygiene of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, urged government to revamp and bring back Environmental Health Officers (EHO), known in local circles as “Samansama” to enforce the sanitation bye-law of the country.
He said as part of the functions of EHOs, with support from Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), they would carry out health education at organized community durbars, churches, schools etc to create awareness among the people about the serious health effects of mismanaging plastic wastes.
Mr Newton added that plastic wastes could be controlled by reducing, reusing and recycling, while adding that people must be informed on the best plastic waste management practices from the point of generation, storage, collection, transportation, treatment and final disposal.
About half, that is forty-seven per cent (47%) of Sweden’s waste is recycled, the remaining fifty-three per cent (53%) of the garbage are used to produce electricity through their Waste-To-Energy (WTE) program.
Sweden only dumps one per cent (1%) of its waste in landfill sites. The country is so clean that they have run out of their own garbage. Now they import trash from other countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and Italy.
The UK and Italy in 2014 exported 2.3 million tons of waste to Sweden, and since the companies charged 43 dollars a ton, these countries made 100million dollars in revenue for just exporting waste.
Ghana could be like the UK and Italy or more like Sweden but that would take government to formulate the right policies and put the right mechanisms in place, while citizens’ adopt proper waste management attitudes, to achieve this amazing feat.
This is very possible.
IN-DEPTH JOURNALISM ASSIGNMENT
GROUP (7) SEVEN
GROUP IN- DEPTH STORY ON FOOD, POLYTHENE, PACKS AND MATTERS ARISING.
GROUP MEMBERS
Michael Kenetey Kofi
Emmanuel Kwame Donkor
Mabel Faith Tannor
Linda Akubila
Ernest Reagan Ayikpah
Boateng Erica
Grace Hammond Asiedu
Lilliana Owusu-Akyem
Theresa Nyarko
Eugenia Akweley Richman
John Tosenu Mensah
Thomas Agyekum Boateng
Apetorgbor Precious Fafa
Abigail Mensah
Akiti Emmanuel Nukunu
Eunice ohenewaa Effah
 |
| Odo River |
Polythene, Packs, Rubbers -Useful, “HARMFUL”, DEADLY?
The idea of carrying a plate, bowl or utensil from home to go buy food by the roadside is thought by many as “not smart”, “unnecessary”, “needless”, “painful”, “hectic”, even “foolish”.
Yes, I mean, if you think about it, it is, because you can simply walk freely, without stress to the food joints, only with your money, and get the same food in rubber or pack, and take your food “to go”, less stress and you would not have to walk carefully so that you do not spill the food if its soup.
Also you can eat straight from the pack and “throw it away”, without having to wash anything except your hand if you used your hands to eat the food.
So simply put, life with these plastics are quite fun and liberating. If it were some time ago, I would have agreed. However, my stance on the matter has last changed, since my team and myself researched and interviewed experts to write this article.
Hopefully, after you have read the whole of this article, yours would change too.
THE UNKNOWN HEALTH SCARE
 |
| Cardiovascular Disease |
In an interview with Dr Sari Soghoian, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine for Medical Toxicology at the Department of Medicine of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, she disclosed that, there were health effects of using plastics overtime.
She said there was good evidence now that exposure as a child was linked later on in life to problems like obesity, diabetes with all the risks of cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and kidney disease that come along with that, and common sensitive cancers like prostate cancer and breast cancer.
Dr Soghoian noted however that, as at now, there was no concrete research or finding that could tell one the dosage of plastic that one would have to consume to reach get the effects.
 |
| Cardiovascular Disease |
“But the question of exactly how much and how many packs of food one would need to eat to get that much, we cannot say. So we know that there are health effects but we cannot be very precise the way we can with pharmaceuticals like a drug, say paracetamol or something else we take like a blood pressure medication”, Dr Soghoian noted.
She also disclosed that with the effects of plastics on the human body were more chronic than acute, adding: “So in the emergency or immediate, we will never see acute poisoning from plastics, but it’s possible that many of the things that we see on daily basis are being accelerated in the population because of plastic activities”, she added.
Dr Soghoian said some chemicals called “plasticisers” that were added in order to make the product softer, more malleable were the danger with plastic products while cautioning that it was not only hot food that could have plastic leach into them but also cold food too, noting however that, the rate at which they leached, was probably minimal.
“The ones that people are most worried about these days, understanding that the research is continuing, are small molecules such as “phthalates”, and “bisphenols”, that helps make it soft. So by all means, things like polythene bags, rubbers, those softer containers, will have such compounds in them.”
Dr Soghoian noted that, these chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, meant they would disrupt hormones and metabolism, adding: “the smaller you are when you are exposed, the more likely that there would be an effect. So we particularly worry about exposure to babies and children.”
THE UNKNOWN AQUATIC DAMAGE
 |
| Dead Pregnant Sperm Whale |
United States of America’s Cable News Network (CNN) reported on April 1, 2019 that, a “pregnant sperm whale” that washed up dead on a tourist spot in Sardinia, Italy, had forty-nine (49) pounds of plastics in its stomach. That is twenty-two (22) kilograms plastics.
If that is not evidence enough that the plastics we use on land end up in the ocean and are mistakenly fed on as food by the marine lives like fishes, turtles, whales, sharks, jelly fish, star fish, dolphins etc, then I do not know what will.
Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo, an Ex Sailor and Co-founder of Plastic Punch-environment and marine life protection advocates, disclosed in an interview that, about seventy per cent 70% of the world’s plastic waste ended up in the ocean.
Mr Quarcoo, noted that, these plastics were harming marine life in general but more so, the leatherback turtle, which were the predominant species of turtles found in Ghanaian oceans.
 |
| Autopsy of Dead Pregnant Sperm Whale |
He said the turtles fed on jelly fishes, but for some reason, they are not able to distinguish between the jelly fishes and the plastics, so feed they fed on plastics adding that this was bad for the marine ecosystem.
“The jelly fishes feed on small fingerlings, and the turtles feed on the jelly fishes. Now if the turtles feed on the plastics thinking they are the jelly fishes, they die, when they die, the population of the jelly fishes are not controlled.
When that happens, the growing number of jelly fishes feed on all the fingerlings causing shortage of fingerlings. So when our fisherman go fishing we get low catch. So it upsets the balance in the food chain,” Mr Quarcoo added.
He said increasingly, there have been more dead turtles and even without establishing the actual cause death scientifically, it was very obvious by the number of plastic washed ashore that plastics were responsible.
Mr Quarcoo said in addition to that, the fishes the human population consumed also fed on plastics themselves, then later, humans’ consumed them, so in effect, humans were consuming plastics.
He added that there was a forecast that predicts more plastics in the world’s water bodies than fishes by the year 2025, if serious and strict measures were not taken to curb the plastic menace.
THE UNKNOWN ENVIRONMETAL CATASTROPHE
 |
| Environmental Catastrophe |
The Ghana National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) on Monday, April 8, 2019, disclosed that the heavy rains that poured the night before, however short, took five (5) lives in Accra because of the floods that ensued after the rains.
That was for just heavy rains that lasted for just about two (2) hours or a little more, so can you imagine what the damage would be if it rains any heavier and longer, which according to the Ghana Meteorological Agency, would be the case for the upcoming raining season.
The flood is the killer, but first let’s find out what causes the floods.
Mr Isaac Newton, a Senior Lecturer at the Ghana School of Hygiene of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, in an interview said, the hazards plastics posed were numerous.
He noted that constantly, when plastics were no longer needed, they were either burnt or thrown away and that these methods of disposing plastics, resulted in air, water and soil pollution.
Mr Newton said the littering also reduced rate of water movement, resulting in increasing an already high water stagnation in water logged areas and water paths in our cities.
This, according to him, were the cause of Ghana’s persistent flooding which led to loss of many lives and properties when there was a heavy rainfall, adding; “improper disposal of plastic leads to increasing sanitation issues, damage to the environment and blocked drains, which contributes to stagnant water accumulation”
Mr Newton noted that such water stagnation brought malaria transmitted by breeding mosquitoes and that malaria accounted for about sixty (60%) per cent of all outpatient department (OPD) cases nationwide according to records.
“When plastic is burned, it tends to release toxic chemicals like Carbon monoxide, Benzene, Ethylene oxide, Xylene, dioxins, furans, Bisphenol-A, Phthalates etc, some of which can trigger asthma, cause asphyxia, cause various cancers and many other health problems.
“Some of the chemicals in plastics may cause side effects such as decreased lung function, increased weight, and increased resistance to insulin, low sperm count, and DNA damage to sperm. Also affect the reproductive development of infant males, resulting in undescended testes, smaller scrotum and smaller penises”, Mr Newton stated.
He further opined that because the decomposition of plastics took between 100 and 400 years, the soil fertility deteriorates as the plastic bags and sachets form part of manure and remain in the soil for years.
Mr Newton said crops and plants roots found it difficult to penetrate the plastic in order to grow very well which led to low or no yield that adversely affect the nutritional status of the entire human population.
Mr Isaac Newton, who also served as the Acting Registrar for the Ghana Chapter of the West Africa Health Examinations Board (WAHEB), said if plastics were burnt, they increased greenhouse gas emissions, which contributed to global climate change.
THE SOLUTIONS RECOMMENDED BY THE EXPERTS
Dr Sari Soghoian, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine for Medical Toxicology at the Department of Medicine of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, said in an interview that Ghana had many sanitation laws that were not being implemented and enforced.
She said those laws must be enforced and the executive functions redeveloped to maintain proper sanitation and encourage consumers to use more reusable items for their food and water transport.
Dr Soghoian noted that even though there was a huge amount of plastic waste that could be recycled but were not in Ghana, it was her personal opinion that recycling was not an energy efficient solution but rather reducing the amount of plastic use was critical.
She urged communities, elders, opinion leaders in communities to set good examples and adopt good behaviors in their plastic use and disposal and call people out when they disposed plastic indiscriminately.
Also speaking in an interview, Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo, an Ex Sailor and Co-founder of Plastic Punch-environment and marine life protection advocates, said consumers had the power to reduce plastic waste by using reusable bags and containers.
He said if consumers stopped buying or creating a demand for them (plastic product), the manufactures would not also have the market for it and would also not produce.
Mr Quarcoo said it did not make sense to have plastics that would be use for some five minutes but would take about 100 to 400 years to degrade, so he urged government to ban the production and use of single-use plastics like polythene bags etc.
He said recycling was not an efficient way to deal with the plastic waste as among the world’s plastic waste, it was only ten (10%) per cent that could be recycled, so there was the need to massively cut down the use of plastics.
Mr Quacoo urged the citizenry to learn to segregate their plastic waste at home while calling for more education on the adverse effects of plastic wastes as a way to better inform people of the dangers posed by plastics.
Mr Isaac Newton, a Senior Lecturer at the Ghana School of Hygiene of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, urged government to revamp and bring back Environmental Health Officers (EHO), known in local circles as “Samansama” to enforce the sanitation bye-law of the country.
He said as part of the functions of EHOs, with support from Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), they would carry out health education at organized community durbars, churches, schools etc to create awareness among the people about the serious health effects of mismanaging plastic wastes.
Mr Newton added that plastic wastes could be controlled by reducing, reusing and recycling, while adding that people must be informed on the best plastic waste management practices from the point of generation, storage, collection, transportation, treatment and final disposal.
About half, that is forty-seven per cent (47%) of Sweden’s waste is recycled, the remaining fifty-three per cent (53%) of the garbage are used to produce electricity through their Waste-To-Energy (WTE) program.
Sweden only dumps one per cent (1%) of its waste in landfill sites. The country is so clean that they have run out of their own garbage. Now they import trash from other countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and Italy.
The UK and Italy in 2014 exported 2.3 million tons of waste to Sweden, and since the companies charged 43 dollars a ton, these countries made 100million dollars in revenue for just exporting waste.
Ghana could be like the UK and Italy or more like Sweden but that would take government to formulate the right policies and put the right mechanisms in place, while citizens’ adopt proper waste management attitudes, to achieve this amazing feat.
This is very possible.
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