The Effect of Microplastics Shed from Wind Turbine Blades on the Metabolic Profile of Mussels.

[NNadir]

The paper I'll discuss in this thread is this one: Daria Bedulina, Špela Korez Lupše, Lars Hildebrandt, Yaqing Duan, Ole Klein, Sebastian Primpke, Christian Bock, Stefan Krause, Steffen Czichon, Daniel Pröfrock, Gunnar Gerdts, Gisela Lannig, Effect of particles from wind turbine blades erosion on blue mussels Mytilus edulis, Science of The Total Environment, Volume 957, 2024, 177509.

It is well known that the decline in performance of wind turbines over a lifetime that can be shown to be on average about 20 years, or in Denmark, less than 20 years), is connected with the degradation of the blades, know as "erosion," particularly prevalent at the blade tips.

If you have had a dental treatment for your gums recently, you may have experienced treatment removes plaque by concentrated jets of water these days, as opposed to metal tools. The same effect that removes plaque, can remove the plastic coatings of wind turbine blade tips.

The angular velocity of very large turbine blades translates into very high linear velocity at the edges of the turbine blades, velocities that can transform rain drops into something like liquid sandpaper.

Large turbines placed in the the benthic ecosystem, where it disrupts that ecosystem, not that the wind industry gives a shit about ecosystems, result in the spallation of particles on the surfaces of turbine blades; it is not necessary for rain to provide the water droplets, spray and mist will suffice.

It follows that the polymeric coating is released as micro and nano plastics, which represent one of the most intractable environmental problems of our times, although it must be said that the degradation of wind turbine blades is at best a minor contributor to problem, but can be serious nonetheless.

The wind industry - while popularly applauded in some circles - has proved useless in addressing extreme global heating, because the unreliability of wind turbines, and the cost of required redundancy to address this problem of reliability, has the effect of entrenching rather than eliminating fossil fuels. This has not stopped people from spreading the obvious lie - a form of a dogmatic quasi-religious chant in my view - that building wind turbines has something to do with eliminating fossil fuels, even though the components of wind turbine blades are in fact, partially petroleum products.

The paper cited at the outset of this post is open sourced, nonetheless I will excerpt it.

The introduction follows, but I must note that the first sentence in it is, in my view, a bald chant. There is no evidence that wind energy has anything to do with climate neutrality. The purpose of the "renewable energy" industry's promotion has always been to attack the only sustainable form of energy now available to humanity, nuclear energy.

The introduction:

Renewable energy production systems such as offshore wind farms play an important role to achieve the goal of sustainable energy transition and climate neutrality by 2050. “The continuous rise and expansion of offshore wind power produced in offshore wind farms (OWFs) led to a European-wide production capacity of 30.3 GW by the end of 2022 with 8.1 GW contributed by Germany (WindEurope, 2023; Deutsche WindGuard, 2023).” However, OWFs pose new anthropogenic pressures to the marine environment. Along the multiple effects of OWFs on the environment (e.g. Christiansen et al., 2022; Degraer et al., 2020), the effect of emissions of polymer particles from turbine blades on marine life is poorly investigated (Kirchgeorg et al., 2018). Under harsh environmental conditions, turbine blades undergo rapid degradation and surface erosion over their leading edge, already after several years of wind turbine exploitation (Mishnaevsky et al., 2023). This degradation leads to the massive emission of particles to the environment from the turbine blade coatings and core materials. As highlighted in the special report of Asbjørn Solberg, Bård-Einar Rimereit and Jan Erik Weinbach from “THE TURBINE GROUP” in Norway, the leading edge errosion (LEE), together with pitting and delamination may cause the emission of approximately 62 kg particles per year per turbine. This approximate emission rate strongly depends on weather condition and the size of the turbines, thus with the prognosed increase of the turbine size and more frequent storm and hail events (due to the climate change), the emission rate will further increase (Solberg et al., 2021). Considering the approximate number of operating wind turbines in Germany in 2019 (31,000, both on- and offshore), and a maximum affected blade surface of approximately 10 m2 and the coating thickness (up to 5 mm), the maximum material release can be estimated as 1395 t/y for all German wind turbines (with a specific material density of 1.2 t/m³). The effects of the released microplastic (MP) particles and chemicals from the coatings and the blades of OWFs have been overlooked in recent ecotoxicity or environmental research so far, although there is rising concern toward marine paints as emerging pollutants (Turner, 2021; Ceia and Bessa, 2024; Hildebrandt et al., 2024; Murugan et al., 2023). Considering the ability of microparticles to adsorb and accumulate various contaminants, the effect can multiply drastically (Kinigopoulou et al., 2022; Rodrigues et al., 2019). Depending on the local energy regime, sediments in tidal flats, mussel banks and channels can act as a temporary sink for settling particles...

Further on they note:

As active, sedentary filter-feeders, bivalve mollusks improve the water quality by removing particular organic matters and plankton but also pollutants such as heavy metals (Bates et al., 2021). They are well known for their ability to accumulate various contaminants in their tissues, and thus are widely used as bioindicators in monitoring aquatic pollution (Vijayavel et al., 2007). A significant number of studies have shown that MP has a negative effect on bivalves (summarized in Khanjani et al., 2023). As a result, bivalves have become one of the most studied organisms and bioindicators in microplastic research and monitoring programs. To summarize these studies, MP affects filter-feeders by multiple ways – clogging gills, digestive tracts and tissues, penetrating cells, and interfering with cellular processes via particle-associated chemicals, including organic and inorganic additives. This causes various physical-chemical effects on the organisms including altered immune response, inflammation, oxidative stress, DNA damage, reduced ability to absorb nutrients and feeding inhibition, reduced filtration activity, neurotransmission dysfunction, impairment of organ functions, reduced reproductive success and an increased formation of granulocytoma (Cappello et al., 2021; Khanjani et al., 2023; Li et al., 2022; Mkuye et al., 2022)...

...The effects of MP released from wind turbine blades due to LEE on marine filter-feeders are unknown and thus represent a significant knowledge gap in risk assessment studies related to the OWFs. In the field study by Wang et al. (2023) the authors describe an elevation of metabolic biomarkers indicating stress in bivalves, the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas and the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis from Rudong Offshore Wind Farm. However, it remains unknown whether this effect is related to OWF-MP or other factors such as general pollution. Therefore, a study under controlled laboratory conditions is required, especially with regard to the discussion on multi-use in offshore wind farms with mytilid mussel farming (Maar et al., 2023). Mytilid mussels are among the key species in coastal communities and are found in coastal waters around the world.

The authors exposed mussels in a control group and in a group exposed to the types of particles known to be emitted by wind turbines for 14 days. (Mussels in the real disturbed benthic ecosystem are exposed for years, not days.)

The experimental set up is shown in this cartoon:



The authors note that the coatings are composites containing metals; in their experiments the analysis by ICP-MS showed elevated concentrations of metals:

This can explain the high mass fraction (23,000 ± 1200 mg kg^-1) of Al followed by the relatively high mass fractions of Cr (400 ± 40 mg kg^-1) and Ni (177 ± 13 mg kg^-1) found in the GFP material. As expected, the clay particles (aluminum silicate hydroxide) were also enriched with Al (Mass fraction 25,000 ± 6000 mg kg^-1). High mass fraction of Al in the coating material can be attributed to mica, one of the components of this material. Similar assumption refers to the relatively high mass fraction of Ti that can be attributed to titanium dioxide. The highest mass fraction in the coating material was demonstrated for Ba (1530 ± 180 mg kg^-1)

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Barium is a fairly toxic element, unless present as a sulfate. Nickel and chromium, depending on their oxidation state (which is not detectable with ICP/MS) can also be toxic. The authors note aluminum is toxic to mussels.

The authors were able to detect metabolic changes in the mussels, but the effects were not dramatic for the mussels. They do not note possible effects on people eating the mussels over extended periods. However they note the limitation of their study, which is that the exposure, while high, was short term.

They repeat, in their conclusion, the claim that wind turbines have something to do with addressing the cause of extreme global heating, CO₂. Again, there is no evidence at all to support this claim. The trillions of dollars “invested” in wind energy have had no effect on the CO₂ emissions, other than to accelerate the rate at which CO₂ accumulates in the planetary atmosphere.

I trust you're having a nice weekend.