Thousands of tiny plastic pellets have washed up on the coast of northern Spain, prompting local authorities to declare an environmental emergency after a shipping container fell off a ship last month.
The regional governments of Galicia and neighboring Asturias, which have borne the brunt of the pollution, have asked Spain’s central government for help, and prosecutors launched an investigation on Monday.
Prosecutors are concerned that the pellets may contain toxic substances, and said there was evidence that pellets had also been found on French beaches.
“These tiny plastic balls are an environmental problem. Fish mistake them for fish eggs, eat them, enter the food chain and end up on our plates,” said Spanish environmental group Ecologista en Acción. said Cristóbal López, a spokesperson for . Associated Press.
The leak was first reported to authorities on December 13, when hundreds of thousands of tiny white balls began washing up on Spain’s Atlantic coast.
The Spanish government representative in Galicia announced that the container ship Toconao, flying the Liberian flag, lost six containers off the coast of Portugal, 80 miles west of Viana do Castelo.
One of the six containers contained 1,000 bags of pellets, and each bag contained 55 pounds of small plastic balls used to make plastic products, according to government representatives. .
Greenpeace and other environmental groups estimate the total amount of pellets to be in the millions. They say the pellets are dangerous to oceans and human life because they break down into even smaller microplastics, which can then be ingested by fish caught by fishermen.
“Pollution of our oceans and ecosystems with plastic is one of the biggest problems facing humanity,” said Teresa Rivera, Spain’s Minister of the Environment. “Therefore, a spill of such significant amounts of plastic requires close monitoring to determine whether transport and shipping companies took appropriate precautions.”
Maersk, the shipping company contracted to transport the container, told The Associated Press that the container was lost in deep water on Dec. 8 during a voyage from the port of Algeciras in southern Spain to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
The company said the Tokonao is a charter vessel, not part of the Danish company’s fleet, and operates on its route between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.
“The six containers contained no hazardous materials. One of the containers contained bags containing small plastic pellets used to make food-grade packaging such as water bottles,” Maersk said. he said. “The shipowner has appointed several cleaning experts to assist in the removal of the pellets.”
Maersk said it was investigating the cause of the lost container in order to “take the necessary steps to minimize the risk of similar incidents occurring in the future.”
Volunteers and workers are cleaning beaches and coastlines in a region that relies on a large seafood industry. Galicia’s coastline was devastated in 2002 by an oil spill from the tanker He Prestige.
Last October, the European Commission proposed measures to prevent mishandling and spillage of plastic pellets. The measure will need to be debated by the 27 EU member states and the European Parliament, and will come into force 18 months after an agreement is reached.
Jordi Oliva, co-founder of the Good Karma Project, a Spanish NGO dedicated to fighting microplastics in the ocean, said this is the largest single spill of pellets his group has witnessed in Spanish waters. He said it was about scale. He said he hoped the incident would help spur action from EU and national authorities.