Billions of discarded Covid masks and gloves will wreak havoc on wildlife for decades
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Billions of disposable Covid-19 PPE items, including masks, will remain in seas and nature for decades to come causing damage and even death, a global study on the impact on wildlife has warned.
The study highlights a sighting of an Atlantic puffin found dead with a mask wrapped around its neck, a cygnet with a mask tangled in its beak and a black bittern bird unable to open its beak due to mask strings.
The Canadian and British research team gathered examples of birds and small animals caught in PPE from 23 countries, including Ireland, using online and social media platforms, unpublished reports and the citizen science database "Birds and Debris".
“Despite the termination of mask mandates across different regions of the world, the billions of disposable pandemic-related debris items mismanaged during Covid-19 will remain in our terrestrial and aquatic environments for decades to come,” the study, led by marine biologist Justine Ammendolia, Dalhousie University, Halifax, states.
Facemasks made up 93% of sightings, most of which were disposable ones. Disposable gloves made up 6.1% of sightings. They found most reported incidents involved birds (83.3%), followed by mammals (10.5%), invertebrates (3.5%), fish (1.8%), and sea turtles (0.9%).
Some 42.1% involved masks entangled around a bird or animal, while 40.4% involved birds trying to use PPE as nest-building material. Swans and gulls were the most often sighted, but the study also found examples of foxes, hedgehogs and squirrels entangled in masks.
Death was recorded in 7.9% of sightings, and while people intervened in 14.9% of cases to untangle a bird or animal, most said they could not get close enough (65.8%).
The study, published in the journal , found: “Due to the complexities associated with global use and accessibility of digital platforms, we likely underestimate the number of animals harmed by debris".
It notes 1.56bn masks were estimated to have entered oceans during 2020 alone, and called for better waste management infrastructure. Experts have previously recommended people cut the strings of disposable masks before binning.