Assessing face mask littering in urban environments and policy implications: The case of Bangkok

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Face mask usage is one of the preventive measures encouraged worldwide to limit the transmission of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. Hence, production and mass use of face masks is on the rise due to the pandemic as well as government rules that mandate citizens to wear face masks. However, the improper disposal of face masks has been polluting the environment with enormous hazardous waste. In this study, a face mask littering assessment in an urbanized environment, Bangkok, was carried out. Three streets in the city were selected and observed for face mask littering for 5 h per day for 42 days. Moreover, a questionnaire from 605 participants was recorded to determine mask handling and disposal practices. The study found a total of 170 single-use face masks within a 13.30 km path. Furthermore, the highest (40) and lowest (17) cumulative litter were recorded on Sunday and Monday, respectively. Buffer analysis at 300 m showed 47% of mask litter was found within five mass transit stations, while 15% are within a single street market. Of 605 respondents, 82.15% used a single-use face mask. Surprisingly, most of them (70.58%) disposed of used face masks in regular bins along with their household waste. The results highlight three policy implications to tackle the growing problem: raising awareness, regulation, and provision of bins designed for used face masks in strategic places and supporting innovations and research for eco-friendly face masks.

Graphical abstract

Related collections

Most cited references 43

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents

G Kampf, D Todt, S. Pfaender … (2020)

Summary Currently, the emergence of a novel human coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has become a global health concern causing severe respiratory tract infections in humans. Human-to-human transmissions have been described with incubation times between 2-10 days, facilitating its spread via droplets, contaminated hands or surfaces. We therefore reviewed the literature on all available information about the persistence of human and veterinary coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces as well as inactivation strategies with biocidal agents used for chemical disinfection, e.g. in healthcare facilities. The analysis of 22 studies reveals that human coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus or endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV) can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days, but can be efficiently inactivated by surface disinfection procedures with 62–71% ethanol, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide or 0.1% sodium hypochlorite within 1 minute. Other biocidal agents such as 0.05–0.2% benzalkonium chloride or 0.02% chlorhexidine digluconate are less effective. As no specific therapies are available for SARS-CoV-2, early containment and prevention of further spread will be crucial to stop the ongoing outbreak and to control this novel infectious thread.

0 comments Cited 1518 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Stability of SARS-CoV-2 in different environmental conditions

Alex Chin, Julie T S Chu, Mahen R A Perera … (2020)

We previously reported the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in different clinical samples. 1 This virus can be detected on different surfaces in a contaminated site. 2 Here, we report the stability of SARS-CoV-2 in different environmental conditions. We first measured the stability of SARS-CoV-2 at different temperatures. SARS-CoV-2 in virus transport medium (final concentration ∼6·8 log unit of 50% tissue culture infectious dose [TCID50] per mL) was incubated for up to 14 days and then tested for its infectivity (appendix p 1). The virus is highly stable at 4°C, but sensitive to heat. At 4°C, there was only around a 0·7 log-unit reduction of infectious titre on day 14. With the incubation temperature increased to 70°C, the time for virus inactivation was reduced to 5 mins. We further investigated the stability of this virus on different surfaces. Briefly, a 5 μL droplet of virus culture (∼7·8 log unit of TCID50 per mL) was pipetted on a surface (appendix p 1; ∼cm2 per piece) and left at room temperature (22°C) with a relative humidity of around 65%. The inoculated objects retrieved at desired time-points were immediately soaked with 200 μL of virus transport medium for 30 mins to elute the virus. Therefore, this recovery of virus does not necessarily reflect the potential to pick up the virus from casual contact. No infectious virus could be recovered from printing and tissue papers after a 3-hour incubation, whereas no infectious virus could be detected from treated wood and cloth on day 2. By contrast, SARS-CoV-2 was more stable on smooth surfaces. No infectious virus could be detected from treated smooth surfaces on day 4 (glass and banknote) or day 7 (stainless steel and plastic). Strikingly, a detectable level of infectious virus could still be present on the outer layer of a surgical mask on day 7 (∼0·1% of the original inoculum). Interestingly, a biphasic decay of infectious SARS-CoV-2 could be found in samples recovered from these smooth surfaces (appendix pp 2–7). 39 representative non-infectious samples tested positive by RT-PCR 3 (data not shown), showing that non-infectious viruses could still be recovered by the eluents. We also tested the virucidal effects of disinfectants by adding 15 μL of SARS-CoV-2 culture (∼7·8 log unit of TCID50 per mL) to 135 μL of various disinfectants at working concentration (appendix p 1). With the exception of a 5-min incubation with hand soap, no infectious virus could be detected after a 5-min incubation at room temperature (22°C). Additionally, we also found that SARS-CoV-2 is extremely stable in a wide range of pH values at room temperature (pH 3–10; appendix p 1). Overall, SARS-CoV-2 can be highly stable in a favourable environment, 4 but it is also susceptible to standard disinfection methods.

0 comments Cited 908 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Covid-19 face masks: A potential source of microplastic fibers in the environment

Oluniyi O. Fadare, Elvis D. Okoffo (2020)

Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image

0 comments Cited 357 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Total Environ

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Total Environ

Title: The Science of the Total Environment

Publisher: Published by Elsevier B.V.

ISSN (Print): 0048-9697

ISSN (Electronic): 1879-1026

Publication date PMC-release: 16 October 2021

Publication date (Electronic): 16 October 2021

Electronic Location Identifier: 150952

Affiliations

International Program in Hazardous Substance and Environmental Management, Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author.

Article

Publisher Item ID: S0048-9697(21)06030-7 Publisher ID: 150952

DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150952

PMC ID: 8519780

SO-VID: 3a4d38fb-10fe-4de4-bb47-edf25ac26ea2

License:

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

History

Date received : 13 August 2021

Date revision received : 9 October 2021

Date accepted : 9 October 2021

Comments

Comment on this article

scite_

Smart Citations

Citing PublicationsSupportingMentioningContrasting

View Citations

See how this article has been cited at scite.ai

scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.