In 2013, 15-year-old Dawson Toth was perched on a ridge watching his best friend, Evan, ski down the north slope of Hero鈥檚 Knob, a popular backcountry area in Kananaskis County, Alberta, when he saw the avalanche. 鈥淚t started at my ski tips,鈥� he recalls. 鈥淭hen I watched the slide spread across the whole slope.鈥�

The wall of snow engulfed Evan, then both teens鈥� fathers, who were waiting farther downhill. Once the slide petered out, Dawson jumped off the crown onto the now bare shale below, switched his beacon to search mode, and made his way toward the buried victims. 鈥淭here wasn鈥檛 much going on in my head except that I needed to find my friends and family fast.鈥澨�

Luckily, three years earlier Dawson had received training from a guide certified by for just this sort of scenario. Within a minute he鈥檇 dug out Evan鈥檚 dad, whose hand was protruding from the softly packed snow near the top of the slide. Thirty feet down, he saw his own father buried to the waist. But where was Evan? Dawson worked downslope in a grid pattern, and soon his beacon homed in on another signal. When his snow probe struck something roughly five feet below, he and a few helpers who鈥檇 come upon the scene began digging frantically. Evan was unresponsive when Dawson pulled him from the听debris. But as soon as Dawson cleared the snow from Evan鈥檚 mouth, his friend coughed and inhaled rapidly.听

Relatively few teens in North America die in avalanches each year, but increasing numbers of young rippers are likely to head for the backcountry鈥攁nd into harm鈥檚 way. Many guides and educators are pushing for earlier avalanche instruction so that if things go wrong, as they did for Dawson and Evan, teenagers will have the skills to deal with it.

鈥淚 liken it to sex education,鈥� says Mary Clayton, a former ski guide and communications director for Avalanche Canada, whose 16-year-old son, Aleks, has started venturing out of bounds. 鈥淚 know it鈥檚 going to happen, so I won鈥檛 put my head in the sand.鈥�

Seniors at public high schools in Jackson, Wyoming, take a ten-day snow-safety course as part of the science curriculum; by adding a two-day field session, as dozens of students did during the 2016鈥�17 school year, they can earn Level 1 certification, the first of two levels of recreational avalanche education. High schools in Breckenridge, Crested Butte, and Vail, Colorado, also offer snow-safety courses. And Avalanche Canada launched a youth-focused avalanche-awareness program in 2005 that reached nearly 8,200 kids across western Canada last year alone, some as young as six.

High schoolers who want to earn safety certification go through the same steps as adults: learning basic snow science, digging snow pits, performing stability assessments, using transceivers, and practicing rescue scenarios. In basic awareness classes, elementary school kids may learn some of those skills, too, or stick with things like identifying avalanche terrain. In Jackson, the youngest participants focus on abstinence, says Sarah Carpenter, co-owner of the American Avalanche Institute: 鈥淎s in, 鈥楬ere鈥檚 why you never leave the resort gate without an adult who is prepared.鈥欌��

We know avalanche education works, says Jordy Hendrikx, who directs the Snow and Avalanche Laboratory at Montana State University. According to data from the , the number of fatalities remained essentially flat between 1995 and 2016, despite an explosion in backcountry use among skiers, snowboarders, and snowmobilers. But the educators and snow scientists I spoke with expressed concerns about whether a little bit of avalanche education will push young people鈥攚ho tend to have high risk tolerance and an eagerness to impress their friends鈥攖o go further than they would otherwise.听

鈥淎re we enabling people to increase their exposure but also decrease their risk?鈥� Hendrikx asks. Carpenter wonders the same thing: 鈥淎 lot of high school kids are ducking the rope, building a jump, and sessioning it for hours. So we tell them, 鈥楬ere are the places you want to avoid putting your jump.鈥� Do I want them to take those same skills and go big-mountain skiing with颅out supervision? No.鈥�

Hendrikx, who in recent years shifted his focus from snow science to how decisions are made in the backcountry, is conducting a study with colleagues from Sweden and Norway to better understand the role that status plays in peer groups, including kids who鈥檝e grown up with exposure to off-piste powder shots via social media.

What they might find, at least among some teenagers, is that the tide of social stigma has actually begun to turn against cavalier attitudes. 鈥淧eople used to not think twice about ducking the rope,鈥� says Andreas Massitti, an 18-year-old from Canmore, Alberta, who started competing in big-mountain freeskiing competitions when he was 14鈥攖he same year he took an avalanche course. 鈥淣ow, with kids my age and younger, if you go out there without the gear or on a bad day, it鈥檚 like, 鈥榃hat were you thinking?鈥� People give you heck about it, eh?鈥�

Youth Avalanche Safety Courses Near You

Parents: Keep your rippers safe in the backcountry with these youth-specific avalanche-safety courses. Don鈥檛 see one near you? Contact the snow-safety nonprofit 听to request a free presentation by an avalanche expert. 鈥�Nicholas Hunt

Alpine Skills International听

Tioga Pass, California听

A five-day touring and mountaineering course for 12-to-18-year-old skiers that covers everything from packing tech颅niques to risk assessment. Late spring; $925;

Utah Mountain 国产吃瓜黑料s听

Salt Lake City, Utah

Students 13 and up who take this three-day course, which combines classroom lectures and field sessions, walk away with American Avalanche Association Level 1 certification. December 27鈥�29; $349;

Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education听

Sandpoint, Idaho

Anyone 16 and older can sign up for SOLE鈥檚 avalanche courses, but it offers a Level 1 course designed expressly for 16-to-25-year-olds.January 13鈥�15; $345;

CAPOW Canadian Powder Guiding

Revelstoke, British Columbia

How to be a Young Person that Older People Respect is a camp focused on the skills, knowledge and respect needed to safely navigate avalanche terrain. Ages 15 and up. December 19-23; $1498 (CAD);

The post How Young Is Too Young to Begin Avalanche Ed? appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

One day in mid-March, Canyon Mansfield took his three-year-old yellow lab, Casey, on a walk into open scrubland behind his house in Pocatello, Idaho. It was the boy鈥檚 happy place. About 400 yards from his house, Mansfield bent down to inspect what looked like a sprinkler head sticking out of the dirt. When he touched the goop smeared on top of it, a stream of powder shot out. Some of it landed on Mansfield鈥檚 face and jacket, but a brisk wind sent most of the powder toward his dog.

The dog鈥檚 eyes quickly glassed over, he struggled to breathe as his mouth filled with red foam, and he started having what the boy describes as a seizure. In a manner of minutes, Casey stopped breathing. A short time later, when Mansfield鈥檚 father, a physician, arrived and wanted to try to resuscitate the dog, the boy yelled, 鈥淣o, I think it鈥檚 poison.鈥�

He was right. Casey died from chemical asphyxiation after inhaling sodium cyanide powder from the device, a baited trap called an M-44 that kills thousands of coyotes and red foxes each year in an effort to prevent livestock predation.

There are two ways that ranchers and Wildlife Services, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, control these predators that kill livestock every year. The first is nonlethal, which puts the onus on ranchers to use strategies like fencing, range riders, guardian dogs, and penning livestock to keep animals safe during calving. The other is lethal. Wildlife Services is often enlisted to carry out these lethal strategies, using M-44 traps, snares, footholds, or other traps, as well as shooting the animals鈥攐ften from the air. Ranchers are not required to try nonlethal predator control before enlisting Wildlife Services to employ lethal methods, and money for the service is pulled from a complex mix of sources, including federal, state, county, and local governments and, through cooperative groups, ranchers themselves.

Every year, these traps kill hundreds of non-target animals, including black bears and, yes, a small number of family dogs and humans. , ten family pets were killed or euthanized after being caught in snares or traps set by Wildlife Services; six were killed by M-44s that same year. Spring is high season for predation, due to all those lambs and calves, so it鈥檚 also the time of year when Wildlife Services places more traps in the field. In March, the same month Casey died, a 15-year-old Deutsch Drahthaar and eight-year-old Weimaraner , as did a .

According to USDA spokesperson Andre Bell, 15 citizens have triggered the devices and suffered a range of illnesses as a result, including shortness of breath and a burning sensation in the eyes and mouth. Another 24 agency employees were also exposed while handling the device. No human has died from exposure, though a Utah man who triggered an M-44 on BLM land in 2003 after mistaking it for a survey stake claims that exposure triggered ongoing health problems, from his job.

It鈥檚 time to ban these poisons from public lands. In early April, four conservation groups as part of their years-long effort to have M-44s, as well as another pesticide-based device called Compound 180, permanently banned. Congressman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced a bill in late March that would also ban the poisons鈥攕omething he鈥檚 been trying to do for decades. 鈥淭he use of this device by Wildlife Services led to the death of an innocent wolf, has previously killed domestic dogs, and sooner or later, will kill a child,鈥� he in March.

Not everyone is on board. Some argue that nonlethal methods aren鈥檛 as effective (though recent studies ) and that M-44s are more appropriate and cost-effective than other lethal means. John Shivik, a former Wildlife Services employee who focused on developing and improving nonlethal control practices, says M-44s are 鈥渞elatively humane鈥� compared to snares or leg-holds, which entrap and often injure an animal for many days before an agent returns.

Regardless of the outcome of the legislation and lawsuits, the tide seems to be turning against lethal methods as ranchers embrace more nonlethal methods. Utah State University and Wildlife Services recently completed a four-year study evaluating the effectiveness of certain guardian dog breeds鈥�Kangals, Karakachans, and C茫o de Gado Transmontanos鈥攁gainst wolves, compared to commonly used breeds. The findings are currently being analyzed. Montana鈥檚 Wildlife Services (the agency operates through state-based offices, with different policies in each state) is also to test the use of electric fences adorned with flags, called fladry, to keep coyotes and wolves away from livestock. Fladry can scare off predators by merely flapping in the wind, and the electric fence acts as a wrist-slap to braver animals.

Ranchers will never be stripped of their rights to eliminate wildlife they believe to be killing their stock in trade, and that includes shooting a wolf or coyote that鈥檚 harassing their flock. It鈥檚 about as likely as repealing the Second Amendment. But nonlethal experimentation appears to be working. According to a of sheep and lamb ranching operations, the number of sheep and lamb killed by predators on ranches in the West declined from 2009 to 2014, from 634,500 to 585,000. At the same time, the use of nonlethal controls increased. In 2004, only 31.9 percent of ranches used one or more nonlethal method to control predators, compared to 58 percent a decade later.

In response to Casey鈥檚 death and Mansfield鈥檚 near-miss, the agency placed a and directed agents to remove all of the devices that were deployed. Then, in mid-June, Wildlife Services announced an agencywide review of the devices as well as new rules that require more visible and obvious warning signs to be placed near M-44s.

It鈥檚 a start toward addressing what, at times, seemed to be a lax attitude toward these dangerous devices. Last year, Idaho鈥檚 Wildlife Services had already prohibited use of M-44s on all federal land in the state, hoping this would 鈥渞educe any anxiety that recreationists may feel鈥� about cyanide traps hiding in their playgrounds. The WS-Idaho agent who set the trap screwed up, because the M-44 that killed Casey, as well as another nearby trap, were in fact on federal land. Plus, the Mansfield family asserts that there were no nearby signs cautioning passersby about the poisonous devices鈥攁n for using M-44s. 鈥淣obody knew what [the M-44] was,鈥� the boy . As the captain of the local county sheriff鈥檚 office told , 鈥淗e鈥檚 very lucky to be alive.鈥�

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By now you鈥檝e probably heard the news: your favorite fleece sheds听听every time it鈥檚 washed. Those fibers often skirt through听听and make their way into aquatic organisms that听eat the floating fibers. That鈥檚 bad for the fish, because the fibers are vectors for toxins and can retard their growth, and it could be bad for people who eat the fish.

This shedding听puts outdoor manufacturers in a bind: many听want to protect the outdoors, but they also want to sell product.听Consumers who love their warm fleece are also faced with a dilemma.听

Some brands have taken steps to address the threat of听microfibers, which are considered a type of microplastic pollution. In 2015, Patagonia asked university researchers to quantify how much fiber its products shed during laundry鈥攖he answer was听a lot. And the听听has convened a working group to start examining microfiber pollution. But here鈥檚 the thing: rather than using money to develop a process that听prevents the shedding, most听brands are still focused on defining their culpability. Because there are other sources of microfiber pollution in the sea, such as fraying fishing ropes,听these听brands want to be able to know for certain how much they鈥檙e contributing before they move听further.听

That won鈥檛 be an easy task, but , an REI-like retailer headquartered in Vancouver, recently gave microplastics researchers at the听听a $37,545听grant to help scientists develop a tracking process. The yearlong project will be led by the aquarium's ocean pollution research program director and senior scientist Peter Ross.听The first step is to create a database of fibers from up to 50 different textiles commonly used in MEC鈥檚 house-brand apparel.

This won鈥檛 be a simple spreadsheet with the names of the polymers, like polyester or nylon. Each piece of outdoor apparel is treated with chemicals like a durable water repellant (DWR). Then there鈥檚 the听kaleidoscope of colors in each brand鈥檚 catalog. Those variants give the fibers a unique profile, sort of like a fingerprint. To capture those fingerprints, Ross and his team will use a machine called a听, which looks at the fibers on a molecular level.

Once that database听is created, the researchers will subject the fibers to saltwater, sunlight, wave action, freshwater, and bacteria听to mimic the types of weatherization that they would experience in the field. In fact, one set of fibers will be staked out in Vancouver Harbor and another in the Frasier River estuary. A听third set, for the sake of experimentation, will be artificially weathered inside the aquarium鈥檚 lab. After increments of time鈥�30, 60, 90, and 180 days鈥攖he fibers will be reexamined and any changes in those polymer fingerprints will be documented and added to a database. The hope听is that sometime in the future, a听random synthetic microfiber could be pulled from Vancouver Bay,听analyzed, and determined to originate听from an MEC jacket.听

Why bother with this experiment, as听the chances of finding an MEC fiber in the vast ocean are infinitesimally small? Ross says it will advance much needed basic research听by shedding light on how fibers change once they鈥檙e in the environment. For MEC, this is a chance to lead the apparel industry鈥檚 response to microfiber pollution by providing a protocol for tracing microfiber pollution back to its source.听To prove that the protocol is effective and viable, it will need to be repeated many times, and, eventually, by different researchers in different labs. Arc鈥檛eryx is next in line. The company will also be giving the aquarium a grant (it听wouldn鈥檛 say how much) to study fibers coming off its apparel.

Skeptics like听Stiv听Wilson, campaign director for environmental activism听group , thinks this is听all a waste of time. We know there鈥檚 a problem, and he thinks brands should address it in manufacturing instead of delaying. 鈥淓co-conscious outdoor brands keep telling me that more research needs to be done on the harms of washing synthetic fabrics such as fleeces and yoga pants,鈥澨齢e wrote听recently. 鈥淒o we really need more research to tell us that spreading millions of trillions of persistent fossil-fuel-derived fibers from polyester clothing is a bad idea?鈥�

MEC鈥檚 chief product officer Jeff Crook asserts that for one or听a handful of outdoor apparel brands to redesign their textiles would do little to stop the larger flow of synthetic microfibers. Walk into any H&M or other fast-fashion retailer and you鈥檒l be hard pressed to find clothes made only from natural materials. Motivating the largest apparel brands to act, he says, will require developing a tool for directly implicating their products as contributors to microfiber pollution.

Beyond all that, another major hurdle lurks. If or when apparel brands do succeed in redesigning textiles to reduce microfiber shedding, who will set that bar? That, says Crook, is where international standards are needed. 鈥淲e have standards meetings at every trade show on things like sleeping bags, on camp-stove temperatures,鈥澨齢e says. Without global standards that set a limit on how many synthetic fibers garments can shed while being laundered, he says, 鈥渨e鈥檙e all just dancing around this problem that we know is there: that clothes are sending听microplastics into the marine ecosystem.鈥�

The post Your Fleece Jacket Pollutes the Ocean. Here鈥檚 the Possible Fix. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Everyone working to address climate change, from activists to scientists, knows that success depends in large part on their ability to convert climate change skeptics (or even straight-up deniers) into proponents for action. Most of us have someone in our lives鈥攁 family member, co-worker, or friend鈥攚hose views on climate change conflict with the latest science, and you鈥檝e likely had some exasperating, polarizing, unconstructive conversations with them.

, an MIT professor of philosophy, and , an MIT professor emerita of history and philosophy of science, have co-written a book that imagines six of those very conversations. (W.W. Norton; $25) reads like six screenplays set in different locations and with two different people in each act. The dialogue鈥攚ell, it probably won鈥檛 pass your sniff test. The authors describe the conversations in the book as 鈥渃onstructive, careful, and amicable,鈥� but they mostly sound stiff.

Even if they don鈥檛 ring true to life, many of the book鈥檚 exchanges contain useful clues on how to unpack specific issues and work around conversational impasses. Here, culled from The Seasons Alter and other experts, are four guiding principles that could fix .

Don鈥檛 Ignore Uncertainty

The book contains a long conversation between an activist from an environmental organization and a person with a terminal illness who is deciding where to donate his money. His conundrum is whether to support environmental initiatives, based on the predictions that climate change will harm large populations, or give to groups addressing things such as malnutrition. 鈥淪ometimes I think the real catastrophes [from climate change] aren鈥檛 that likely, and the likely effects aren鈥檛 that bad,鈥� he says.

There鈥檚 no doubt that greenhouse gasses are causing the earth to warm, the seas to rise, and weather patterns to change. But these events aren鈥檛 happening according to a strict schedule, and scientists can鈥檛 give us a precise timeline with deadlines for action. Climate change is likely to undergird an uptick in pandemics, for example, but there鈥檚 no blueprint for preventing those. Some impacts are episodic (heat waves, increasingly severe storms) while others are constant (sea level creeps up), but all are costly. Still, proponents of inaction often use those uncertainties as talking points.

The activist does her best to present fact-based evidence that the climate movement deserves the man鈥檚 support, but she has to allow that while there is consensus on the basic mechanisms of climate change, there have been some contradictory studies. That鈥檚 how science works. It鈥檚 why peer reviews are important and why researchers keep inquiring, testing theses, and adding to the canon. Scientists who study cancer and its causes also don鈥檛 always agree, but that鈥檚 not a reason to call off cancer research funding.

The merits of a cost-benefit analysis will only go so far in arguing for action to address climate action, and in the end, the authors explain, we need to make some qualitative judgments. Acknowledge gaps in knowledge鈥攁nd remember that it doesn鈥檛 defeat your purpose.

Try to Make a Connection

Managers and people who click on articles about productivity love talking about emotional intelligence. But says we need more of it in the climate debate as well. Lertzman, who calls herself a 鈥減sychosocial strategist focusing on climate and environment,鈥� coaches NGOs, universities, and corporations on how to communicate issues related to climate change. Her bailiwick is the intersection of psychology and climate change, and Lertzman says we need to be emotionally literate in order to understand the relationship others have with climate change. A Midwest farmer, for instance, might be 鈥渃oncerned with staying afloat and keeping their way of life viable鈥攖here is an emotional charge there, and their response to climate change is different than an urbanite in, say, the Bay Area,鈥� she says.

So, know your audience, suggests Lertzman. Climate change means different things to different people, and we all bring our own biases to the conversation. You might听know people who believe in climate change and advocate for political action but also disavow vaccines. Clearly, not all of these opinions are rooted in science. You can counter these beliefs with data, but it is unlikely to evaporate beliefs that may be based in anxiety and distrust.

Lertzman advises 鈥渟tarting from a place of authentic compassion, to really attune ourselves to how scary and overwhelming these issues can be for people.鈥� She knows that compassion tends to get a bad rap because it鈥檚 equated with letting people off the hook, but she says the opposite is true: 鈥淎nyone working in mental or public health will tell you that without compassion, we will stumble into a fight by engaging in each other鈥檚 resistance and our own interests in protecting ourselves from whatever feels threatening.鈥�

This approach isn鈥檛 some psychobabble, either, says Lertzman. Neurology shows that compassion soothes the nervous system, while confrontation excites it. 鈥淚f our 鈥攖he survival part of our minds鈥攊s activated, it鈥檚 game over. If I鈥檓 feeling uneasy or anxious, I鈥檓 not even going to hear what you have to say.鈥�

Advance the War on Atmospheric Carbon, Not on People

have painted the climate activist movement as oppositional to American values. They cast the war on coal as a war on coal miners. While , coal鈥檚 loss of competitiveness against natural gas and renewables is what really dooms the coal industry.

In one dialogue, the climate activist lays out a good argument that puts this kind of outcome in historical perspective. Workers, she says, have 鈥渇ound themselves displaced because of foreign competition or technological change or shifts in tastes and attitudes.鈥� Indeed, there鈥檚 broad as the costs of wind and solar quickly fall while their capacity to meet more of the world鈥檚 energy demands rises.

But the bigger issue is this: On both sides of the argument, things get political and emotional fast when it comes to the . And oftentimes our views on climate change are shaped by those of our parents. That鈥檚 a common backstory in many of the more than 500 responses that Reddit users posted over the past month to this question: 鈥淔ormer climate change deniers, what changed your mind?鈥� 鈥淚 grew up actively and obnoxiously denying climate change because my dad told me it wasn鈥檛 real,鈥� said one responder.

Others said they were raised Republican and had always seen climate change as a 鈥渓iberal鈥� issue that they could not or should not endorse. A video shown during a church service focused on the virtues of caring for the earth made one right-leaning respondent a believer.

Many former deniers said that reading about the science behind climate change and how it鈥檚 already affecting us was the catalyst for their conversion. In some cases, Reddit responders pointed to how changes in their personal lives made them believers. 鈥淚 grew up ice fishing in central Illinois, and I haven鈥檛 been able to ice fish in three years. The shit ain鈥檛 right. We had tornadoes in February. I was deer hunting in a fucking T-shirt in December,鈥� wrote one, who called himself a liberal redneck.

Know How to Navigate an Impasse

, a conservation biologist turned climate change activist, says the most important thing to do is to just keep having conversations about climate change, because the more we talk about it, the less it becomes a taboo issue that makes everyone uncomfortable. That鈥檚 not to say these conversations will always be easy or pleasant.

When things get dicey, Lertzman says, 鈥淚 use a martial arts move, where you don鈥檛 engage directly with the opposition, you don鈥檛 argue. I might say, 鈥業 hear you鈥檙e saying XYZ, and I won鈥檛 challenge that, but can you help me understand? Let鈥檚 just say, hypothetically, that climate change is happening and will have this effect, what would that mean for you? Could you imagine a scenario where you are involved?鈥欌��

Lertzman says the goal of this kind of conversation is to help each other get in touch with what is true and uncover the resistance the other person is expressing, which she typically finds to be a defense mechanism.

Don鈥檛 expect to master this overnight, she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a skill, but it鈥檚 about guiding the conversation to arrive at what is true. We鈥檙e all wired for that鈥攖o crave the truth.鈥�

The post How to Reason with the Climate Change Denier in Your Life appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

It seemed inevitable that the deadly 2010 explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform, which caused听millions of gallons of oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, would eventually get the Hollywood treatment. It鈥檚 also听unsurprising that a former Department of Justice lawyer would pen an account of the spill that is cast in nearly as dramatic fashion鈥斺�渢he story that neither BP nor the federal government wants heard,鈥� according to its publisher, the Brookings Institute Press. Both were released this fall, within weeks of each other.

Unfortunately, neither the movie, Peter Berg鈥檚 , nor the book, Daniel Jacobs鈥� , do justice to one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. Where a dramatized account could at least convey the human side of the disaster to a wider audience, Deepwater Horizon feels more like an action movie with a side helping of workplace and familial drama. And where a nonfiction account could bring fresh facts and clarity, BP Blowout fails to deliver many new insights. That well from hell, as those who labored on the rig , still elicits more questions than answers.

BP Blowout, released October 18, is far from the first nonfiction account of the disaster. emerged within the year following the accident. But even with six years of distance, Jacobs hasn鈥檛 managed to find much unexplored terrain in terms of what Deepwater Horizon can teach us as energy consumers. Readers get a close look at everything from the causes of the accident to the missteps that both BP and the government made in their responses. It鈥檚 informative for those who haven鈥檛 read much about the trials, settlements, public-relations campaigns, and attempts by individuals to defraud BP through false claims tied to the accident. But despite Jacobs鈥� insider status, the book doesn鈥檛 bring much to the table that hasn鈥檛 been reported before. It misses an opportunity to advance the conversation around the legacy of the spill or provide lessons on how we might be better prepared for the next major catastrophe involving an extractive industry.

In one section, Jacobs details the ways in which John Browne, the BP CEO who resigned three years before the spill, painted BP as a concerned corporate citizen that was investing heavily in renewable energy yet in reality was a masterful greenwasher. The company鈥檚 focus on growth and promoting a green image obscured , which under Browne鈥檚 successor, Tony Hayward. 鈥淲e were all hoodwinked by John Browne,鈥� Frances Beinecke, former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, tells Jacobs. And that鈥檚 the last Jacobs says about it, when he could have explored how Browne ingratiated himself with big environmental NGOs鈥攁nd, more important, with regulators.

Jacobs also discusses BP鈥檚 poor safety record prior to 2010, including a 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas that killed 15 people. But he doesn鈥檛 explore how BP鈥檚 environmental record compares to that of Exxon, or Chevron, or any other large oil producer.

Still, Jacobs does bring to light the abuse of the system set up to reimburse those whose livelihoods were affected by the spill. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, he determined that the Department of Justice brought criminal cases against more than 300 individuals who filed false claims seeking monetary rewards from BP, and that the DOJ won 236 of those cases and gave 75 individuals federal prison sentences, with one as high as 15 years. Yet, Jacobs points out, only five individuals were convicted of crimes related to the blowout, and none of them will serve time in prison.

While BP Blowout explores the disaster as a series of court battles and corporate and political spin campaigns, Deepwater Horizon, which premiered September 30, focuses on the human toll. The movie, which is the first feature film about the disaster, follows chief electronics technician Mike Williams (played by Mark Wahlberg) and the ten other workers aboard the rig during the explosion and subsequent fire, as well as their co-workers and families. John Malkovich portrays a truly devilish Donald Vidrine, one of BP鈥檚 managers on the rig who faced manslaughter charges that were later dropped.

Unsurprisingly, the movie oversimplifies at times, especially when it comes to laying blame for the blowout. Berg makes no effort to explore the degree to which Transocean, the company that owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon rig, was culpable for the accident. That鈥檚 despite the fact that, as noted in Jacobs鈥� book, Transocean was apportioned 30 percent of the blame in private-party lawsuits. (The Department of Justice said that听BP bore 67 percent, and Halliburton, tasked with placing the cement cap on the well that later failed, bore just 3 percent.) Instead, the movie holds tight to the image of Transocean as victim, pressured by BP to speed the well鈥檚 closing because the project was weeks behind schedule. Because key survivors declined to consult on the movie鈥� they signed gag orders with BP to receive settlements鈥攊t鈥檚 hard to know how authentically the events are portrayed, though the sequence of decisions and major events that resulted hew closely to what鈥檚 available in court records.

Ultimately, the movie fails to deliver on its potential by never developing characters deeply enough for the viewer to make real connections. Those looking for a more profound treatment of the disaster鈥檚 human toll would be better off watching Margaret Brown鈥檚 2014 documentary, , and hearing from the real people who were most affected by the spill.

The best writing and filmmaking have the potential to connect an audience to tectonic shifts in the timeline of a place or a culture in a deep, visceral manner. But neither Berg鈥檚 film nor Jacobs鈥� book achieve that admittedly ambitious听goal. Six years after the fact, we still need coverage of the spill that tries harder鈥攄igs deeper听or at least outrages us鈥攂ecause we don鈥檛 want it to happen again. And we still can鈥檛 be sure that it won鈥檛. In his book, Jacobs details how neither the federal government nor the energy extraction industry have taken any meaningful steps to improve safety regulations for offshore drilling. With the backdrop of a significant recent uptick in deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, he succinctly concludes: 鈥淭here is little cause for optimism.鈥�

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You might have missed it, but last month President Obama signed into law a bill that many consider the most significant environmental legislation to pass Congress in 25 years. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act overhauls the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a 40-year-old statute that, in theory, empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the use of toxic chemicals in the stuff we buy. In听practice, it failed miserably.听

If you ask environmental and public health advocates what was wrong with TSCA, they鈥檙e likely to respond with another question: what wasn鈥檛? The Environmental Defense Fund posted , but the highlights are that TSCA gave the EPA very limited powers to test chemicals for toxicity and that even when the science showed clear hazards鈥攊.e., 鈥渢his stuff causes cancer鈥濃�攖he agency often failed to get a ban to stick because a federal court might side with industry groups that complained the ban would hurt their business. That鈥檚 what happened when the EPA tried to ban asbestos.

The reforms allow the听EPA to evaluate the environmental and health risks that chemicals pose based only on the best available science, without having to also show a cost-benefit analysis of a proposed ban. The new law also includes an important change that can impact outdoor gear and apparel manufacturers, because while the old TSCA allowed the EPA to regulate the sale and use of discrete chemicals, it did not require it to regulate the products in which those chemicals are used. Now,听the EPA is tasked to do so, in order to limit consumers鈥� exposure to hazardous chemicals through the use of those products鈥攁nd this is important for all manufacturers of non-consumables (products other than food and drugs, over which the FDA has purview). Gear and apparel manufacturers are actually big users of chemicals, so these new regs may impact what chemicals听go into their products.听

The new TSCA could accelerate the regulation of two main groups of compounds that the EPA has been eyeing for a while: perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) and flame retardants. PFCs play a central role in durable water repellent (DWR) coatings, which are applied to outerwear and footwear. (It鈥檚 worth noting that these represent a drop in the PFC bucket鈥攖he chemicals are also used in carpets, food packaging, upholstery and other products we use daily.)听

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8 in reference to the eight strongly-bonded carbon atoms in its molecular structure, is a byproduct of PFC production and numerous studies have concluded it is toxic to animals and a likely human carcinogen. Flame retardants are applied to tents in compliance with fire safety requirements.听

The Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) has special working groups studying both PFCs and flame retardants. 鈥淲e need to design products that meets specific performance requirements and protects users from the elements and from harm,鈥� says Beth Jensen, OIA鈥檚 director of corporate responsibility.

But high-performance chemicals are a double-edge sword. With tents, brands are precariously sandwiched between state laws to meet flammability standards and other state laws (sometimes from the same states) that restrict the use of certain flame retardants. One class of flame retardants鈥攑olybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)鈥攈as been phased out due to their toxicity, but not much is known about their replacements (a class called organophosphates). A measured campers鈥� exposure to flame retardants (most of them organophosphate types) and found that after setting up their tents, they had 29 times as much of the chemicals on their hands as prior to setting them up. The test also showed the chemicals are inhaled while users are in the tent. 听

An organophosphate called TCEP is likely one that EPA will prioritize for evaluation under the new TSCA regulations, so its days could be numbered.

鈥淲e're gathering data on whether we even need to add these [chemicals],鈥� says Jensen, noting that only seven U.S. states and Canada require the use of flame retardants in tents. 鈥淲e're trying to gather data on tent fire events in Europe, versus those in the U.S. and Canada. If we see that [flame retardant] chemistry is not saving lives, we can work with the Canadian and U.S. governments to remove the requirements.鈥澨�

On the PFC front, Patagonia, Columbia, The North Face,听and other apparel brands have been researching alternatives to C8-based DWR formulations for years. The North Face eliminated C8 from its DWR last spring, while Patagonia did the same this spring. DWRs made with short-chain PFCs, based on a C6 molecule are far less toxic and are the predominant substitute,听but are not quite as effective performance-wise. The North Face says it has sourced听a non-fluorinated (PFC-free) DWR听that has comparable performance to C6, which it plans to use on 30 percent of its waterproof-breathable apparel by this coming 2017. It says none of its apparel will use fluorinated DWR by 2020.

Patagonia has invested $1 million in Beyond Surface Technologies, which is . BST鈥檚 CEO Matthais Foessel says the firm is still working on a formula that could perform as well as C8 PFCs, and does not have a launch date. Patagonia also partnered with the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business to hold in which teams of graduate students were challenged to design a PFC-free DWR.

Columbia made progress with OutDry Extreme, which still uses PFCs but not C8, and just last week it introduced OutDry Extreme Eco, a shell jacket that uses zero PFCs and which we think听performs pretty darn well. The Eco鈥檚 interior is polyester and its outer membrane is made of polyurethane combined with proprietary components.听

The Eco jacket appears to be the first high-performance and PFC-free coating in the industry, but of course it is proprietary to Columbia. Jeff Mergy, Columbia鈥檚 director of innovation, says that just keeps brands working toward a solution. 鈥淐ompetition breeds better products,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure our competitors are working on something right now, and that鈥檚 great for the environment and great for the industry.鈥�
听

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It all started on a beach in southwestern England in the early 2000s. Richard Thompson, then a senior lecturer at Plymouth University (where he now serves as professor of marine biology),听was leading a team of graduate students researching microplastics in marine environments. Examining samples of sandy sediment, they expected to find degraded bits of marine plastic from decades-old flotsam听or plastic beads that were becoming widely used in cleaners. To their surprise, most of the plastic fragments were fibrous, which meant they听likely came from clothing, rope, or some types of packaging.

Then, in 2011, Mark Browne, one of Thompson鈥檚 former graduate students, published a study in which he examined sediment sampled from 15 beaches around the world. He听found high concentrations of polyester and acrylic fibers in samples taken near wastewater treatment plants. He then ran a polyester fleece jacket through the wash and filtered 1,900 fibers from the wastewater鈥攆ibers that otherwise would听have gone to the local wastewater treatment plant. Browne started reaching out to apparel makers to see if they鈥檇 help fund research to study this issue more deeply鈥攅ventually, he hoped, finding tweaks to fabric design or apparel construction that would stop the听microfibers from entering wastewater. He received听one offer of help鈥攆rom women鈥檚 clothing brand Eileen Fisher鈥攂ut Patagonia, Columbia, and other big brands declined, saying they didn鈥檛 know if the fibers were anything they needed to worry about.

Fast-forward four more years, and the fibers finally got everyone鈥檚 attention. The science was piling on, showing that wastewater treatment plants couldn鈥檛 filter out all synthetic fibers,听and that toxins such as DDT and PCBs can bind to them as they make their way into watersheds. It also showed听that small aquatic species ingest the fibers, and that fish and bivalves sold for human consumption also contain microfibers. Experiments have听shown that听microplastics can lead to听poor health outcomes in some species, and research is underway to find out how the plastics affect humans.

Jill Dumain, director of environmental strategy at听, was one of the people paying attention to all the news. In early 2015, she听and the听company鈥檚 leadership decided to commission a study to find out if and how Patagonia鈥檚 iconic and well-loved fleeces and some other synthetic products were contributing to the problem.听The results recently came听in, and they鈥檙e not good.

, performed by graduate students at the at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that during laundering, a single fleece jacket sheds as many as 250,000 synthetic fibers鈥攕ignificantly more than the 1,900 fibers Browne first recorded. Based on an estimate of consumers across the world laundering 100,000 Patagonia jackets each year, the amount of fibers being released into public waterways is equivalent to the amount of plastic in up to听11,900 grocery bags.

The experiment involved five pieces of apparel: three Patagonia fleece jackets,听each with slightly different construction, as well as a nylon shell jacket that contains polyester insulation, plus a fifth specimen鈥攁 鈥渂udget鈥澨齠leece jacket made by an undisclosed brand. Replicates of each jacket听were washed multiple times, both in front-loading and top-loading washing machines. The effluent from each cycle was collected and put through a two-step filtration system that captured fibers with both a 333- and 20-micrometer mesh screen.

The jackets were then put through a 24-hour 鈥渒iller wash,鈥澨齱hich Patagonia uses to simulate the aging of a garment. The researchers did this to test whether older garments might shed more fibers as they age. After repeating the washing tests on these artificially aged jackets, they saw that age听indeed increases fiber release听by 80听percent.

In previous studies, researchers counted the total number of fibers, but that was not a viable path for this study, which instead calculated their mass. 鈥淲e fully intended to do counts, but in the volumes of water that we collected and filtered, there were simply so many鈥攈undreds of thousands鈥攐f fibers [from each test], we knew quickly that even with five of us [on the research team] we did not have time or energy to [do individual counts],鈥澨齭ays Stephanie Karba, the lead researcher on the UCSB team.

Using an equation widely used in the textile industry to determine fiber count based on mass, researchers found that the highest estimate of fibers released from a single jacket was 250,000, and the average across all jackets was 81,317听fibers.

Hoping to publish its detailed methodology in a science journal, the team hasn鈥檛 revealed all its findings. But in addition to data about fiber release, the Patagonia report shows that fiber loss is directly related to the type of washing machine and the age of the garment.听Garments released five times as many microfibers when washed in top-loading washing machines听compared to front-loaders. And aging听affected fiber loss differently for different garments听based on the type of washer. For example, compared to Patagonia jackets, the average mass of fiber shed from the budget jacket of undisclosed origin was much higher when it was washed at the new stage听in a front-loader. But after all the jackets were aged, the Patagonia jackets shed a comparable amount of fibers to the budget jacket. In top-loaders, the budget jacket shed a comparable amount of fiber, on average, to the others when new.

Another surprise: The nylon shell jacket actually released a comparable amount of fiber to the fleece jackets in some tests, and even more in other tests, seeming to indicate that the polyester fill escaped through seams or the shell fabric.

Having reviewed the findings, Richard Thompson, the Plymouth University scientist whose work knocked over听the first domino, says Patagonia鈥檚 report might be more useful for Patagonia than for the scientific community听because it does not take a vastly different approach that Browne鈥檚 research. He says he鈥檇 have preferred if Patagonia鈥檚 tests had been done with the use of detergent (the UCSB researchers say detergent would have clogged the filters, which is also why Browne did not use detergent in his 2011 research) and on a wider selection of apparel items.

鈥淭he budget jacket seems to perform worse in some tests but better in others, but even if it performed consistently better or worse, you can still only reach the conclusion for that one budget jacket of unknown origin,鈥澨齢e says. Still, he thinks it was an important first move by industry. 鈥淗onestly, some companies might shy away from this; they might not want to open a can of worms. So it鈥檚 a environmentally responsible move听and potentially quite risky, since there is not much data out there on everyone else鈥檚 apparel.鈥�

Add to the list of concerns unique to the outdoor industry: chemical additives in performance apparel (think听waterproof-breathable duds) that enter the water along with the fibers.

Of course, apparel companies are far from the only stakeholders being thrust into the spotlight. The role washing machines play in microfiber pollution is also a major concern, and scientists and apparel companies are calling on appliance manufacturers to investigate the efficacy of adding filters to washing machines to capture fibers before they enter wastewater. The problem will听grow with the rise in the number of washing machines coming into use globally鈥擲wedish statistician says 2 billion of the 7 billion people on earth used washing machines in 2010, but he predicts that 5 billion out of the 9 billion humans expected to populate the earth by 2050 will use the appliances.

A 听showed that while wastewater treatment plants remove more than 98 percent of plastic fragments from wastewater, they still send an estimated 65 million pieces of microplastics into watersheds each day. Polyester, the main fiber used in fleece, makes up the largest share of the plastics that get through鈥攅ven though it only accounts for 10.8 percent of the plastic in influent wastewater (water that enters the plant). Also, many fibers that do get captured often end up in environmental sludge, which is sometimes added to fertilizer.

To try to get ahead of the problem, Patagonia and other apparel companies have said they want to research new yarn and fabric constructions to determine whether microfiber shedding can be addressed through better design, something that鈥檚 already happening in Europe.

After a 2013 European Commission鈥揻unded research program called Mermaids found that surfactants in detergents lead to much higher fiber loss鈥攐n the order of 1 million fibers shed from a single fleece jacket鈥攖extile specialists in Spain and Italy were tasked with developing a special coating or impregnation that would be applied to the fabric during manufacture and, in theory, reduce the amount of fiber loss. More details on the program are expected in December, but researchers say the coatings being tested and developed are environmentally benign.

The Mermaids program, promoted through the Plastic Soup Foundation, an NGO based in the Netherlands, has also released some guidelines based on its initial research, including suggestions to avoid the use of detergents with high pH, powder detergents, and the use of oxidizing agents. It also suggests washing clothing in cold water听and softening hard water, and it released a 听to drive its point home. Clothing company G-Star, which integrates synthetic fibers sourced from plastic ocean debris into the denim jeans it sells, has partnered with the Plastic Soup Foundation to promote the Mermaid program.

In August, at the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City, Patagonia will present the findings to its industry peers. It hopes to partner with the Outdoor Industry Association to turn the UCSB researchers鈥� testing protocol听into an industry standard that would enable all clothing manufacturers to set a benchmark for fiber release from their apparel products. Dumain says it鈥檚 important that companies outside the outdoor niche start tracking microfiber issues听as well. And she thinks an international third-party testing standards group, such as the ASTM, which has developed testing methods for factors such as sewn seams and flammability of apparel textiles, could also take the protocol and run with it. 鈥淚t鈥檚 right up their alley,鈥澨鼶umain says.

Unlike laws that restrict manufacturers from adding plastic microbeads to cleaning products, no obvious legislative approaches limit听microfiber pollution, and apparel makers would likely prefer to self-impose approaches to reducing fiber loss rather than find themselves in the crosshairs of regulators听should scientific evidence that microfibers pose environmental dangers continue to mount.

鈥淲e knew this would be step one in testing鈥攖o prove the methodology, to understand where we were contributing to the problem, where the industry could be contributing to the problem,鈥澨齭ays Dumain. 鈥淔rom here, it鈥檚 going to set up a whole lot of testing that needs to happen throughout the apparel industry.鈥�

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I had expected Terry Tempest Williams鈥� latest book, 听(MacMillan), would be a string of tributes to the sacred spaces within our 100-year-old park system. And that鈥檚 what Williams says she expected to write. But by the time I've reached Big Bend鈥攖he midpoint in the dozen parks that comprise a dozen chapters鈥攊t鈥檚 clear that this book isn't about our romanticized images of the parks.

The Hour of Land is about National Parks as battlegrounds. What it means to hold land in trust, who defines its best uses, the tangibility of park boundaries, and whether and how we will reconcile our history with our present and future, are all tested on these lands.

Williams, 60, is an acclaimed nature writer recognized for her lyrical, conservation-minded prose.听And there are plenty of passages in which Williams so deftly conveys the magic of a place that you will ache to be there and experience it directly. But she is also an increasingly outspoken activist, and spends most of her words exploring conflicts in and around our parks, as well as听some of her internal battles. Even on the system's 100th birthday, this approach feels more fitting than another book exalting their beauty.听

Fossil fuel development undergirds Williams' family, and it is a thread that emerges when she confronts the resources the landscape holds. In the book, Williams visits Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota听with her father, who spent his career laying natural gas pipeline across the West. They tour the park with its then superintendent, Valerie Naylor (she retired in 2014), who describes her Sisyphean efforts to keep fracking pads and attendant gas flares from marring the park's viewshed.听

Williams' dad is curious about, but then dismayed by, the Bakken shale oil development that envelops the park, which has been .听“There's no dignity here,” he laments, looking on as men sleep in truck cabs and storage units. His own son, Williams' brother, had done so the previous winter. Williams herself recently purchased a 10-year lease on hundreds of acres of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management听in her native Utah.听While the parcels, bordering parkland, are earmarked for oil and gas development, she made the purchase with an eye toward protecting them from exploitation.

On Alcatraz Island, which became part of the National Park System a year after its 19-month occupation by a coalition of Native American groups (spearheading a “new era of Indian laws” and recognition), she contemplates colonization and isolation, seen through the artist Ai Weiwei's听听inside the former prison鈥攑orcelain bouquets in prison-cell sinks, a Chinese dragon kite stretched throughout the building where prisoners used to work.

In Glacier National Park in 2003, Williams and her family come terrifyingly close to the convergence of multiple wildfires. Noting the loss of glacial cover in the namesake park, she writes, “Climate change is not an abstraction here, but real change in real time… To touch warm granite beds once blanketed by glaciers is both a hard fact and a perversion.”

I asked Williams how the book evolved. “I wanted it to be a lyrical, beautiful portrait of our National Parks,” she said, but in the course of writing it, she realized, “lyricism wasn't enough.” She followed her nose, even when it led to hard topics. “There is a shadow side [within the parks] that is as compelling as the light,” she says.听

It's a heady book. But it is an important one, too, because the chronically underfunded National Park Service鈥攁nd more broadly, all our public lands鈥攁re confronting a staggering list of stressors right now. 听There鈥檚 oil and gas development right outside park boundaries. There are debates over what recreational activities and fund-raising tactics (see: branding rights) the parks should allow. And that's not to mention the marks climate change is leaving: sea level rise lapping up Dry Tortugas and Isle Royale's all-but-gone wolves, to name but two. The Hour of Land is part of a conversation to kick off the next 100 years.

In Canyonlands National Park, Williams writes: “This is the disorienting truth of the Colorado Plateau: We stand on the edge of a great erosional landscape… We look out not simply toward a linear horizon but a curved one where the planet becomes a globe spinning toward change.”听

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Outdoor recreation can be a听gateway drug to environmental activism. It certainly was for Patagonia founder and co-owner Yvon Chouinard, as he writes in the introduction to , a book the adventure clothier published in February. In the early 1970s, a threat to Chouinard鈥檚 beloved Ventura County surf break mobilized him to join with others and take a stand against a development project. This, he writes, was when he “came to realize the power of an individual to effect major change.”

Sure, Chouinard found success in Ventura鈥攖he development plan was defeated (the company he'd headquartered in听Ventura not听long before did pretty well for itself, too). But the reality is that for every victory, environmentalists lose big battles. This chagrins Chouinard, who believes many environmental organizations falter because they do not recognize what they are: a business selling a product. Just like he is. (Even though, he readily admits, many businesspeople are sleazeballs.) Instead of fleece jackets and aspirational lifestyles, environmental non-government organizations (NGOs) sell a vision of a wrong being righted, of clean air and water, of ecosystems in balance. Sure, they are profoundly different types of products, but selling them requires common tools: planning, strategy, marketing, organizing, technology,听and money.听

Framed that way, it doesn鈥檛 seem so outlandish that a massive clothing company would be qualified to write a guidebook for saving the environment. Still, I wanted to learn whether this how-to book could meet its lofty goal.

In 1994, Patagonia hosted the first 听and brought together the heads of many scrappy little NGOs to teach them things that the company had proven itself to be phenomenally good at鈥攏amely, building a community of like-minded, passionate followers, making mountains of money, and putting it to good use. Tools boils down the key messages of 14 years鈥� worth of those meetings into a 254-page instruction manual for NGOs. But the book's appeal extends to any nights-and-weekends volunteer with the local riverkeepers group, or someone galvanizing opposition to a proposed mine, or someone lobbying her city council for bike lanes.

Patagonia has recruited prominent environmental activists鈥�, , and Jane Goodall, to name a few鈥攖o inspire attendees, and a dozen of these keynote speakers penned essays for the book. These serve to rally the reader through victory stories, many of the David and Goliath variety, that pitted communities against petrochemical giants or rainforests against road-builders. But the book leaves the tactical stuff to Tools conference trainers, the folks who do the hands-on combat training, so to speak, at those bi-annual events.

“The first time I went to the Tools conference, I expected the trainers to be good-hearted amateurs,鈥� says Nora Gallagher, Patagonia鈥檚 environmental editor and co-editor of Tools. 鈥淚 was astonished by their level of expertise. These guys are at the top of their field regarding organizing, strategy and communications.”听

Each trainer structures his or her chapter differently鈥攕ome use mnemonic devices, others use lessons or sorts of recipes. (You may wonder, as I did, who these chapter authors are. Their bios are hiding at the end of the book.) None of these brass-tacks sections are page-turners, frankly, but that's okay, since they are written in digestible chunks and you can read selectively based on whatever skill or strategy you're looking to hone.

Sometimes the book's success stories feel a bit too easy; too tied-up-with-a-bow. Gallagher says she considered seeking out illustrative failure stories, a trope used widely in business books, but decided that approach felt “a little trendy” and, given how beset with failures the environmental movement has traditionally been, “maybe it is more helpful to see what does work.”

Indeed, the fact that Tools for Grassroots Activists left this jaded journalist feeling a wee bit more hopeful is a testament to that tactic. Plus, the book brims with gorgeous photos, which will surprise no one familiar with the brand's catalogs and books.听

But while many of these images and much of the content is focused on wilderness and how humans are impacting our wild playgrounds, there is rather little on issues relating to environmental justice鈥攖hat is, how dirty air and water is affecting humans who lack the means to escape it. There are references to the Sierra Club's clean air campaign, and stories that touch First Nations and Native American communities, but the book fails to offer substantive guidance on how NGOs can better serve and empower disadvantaged communities. Myers admits that a lack of diversity is one of the environmental movement's weakest points and that “creating authentic relationships” across cultures is something she is focused on at Patagonia.

So, with that caveat, if you're an activist with an NGO, if you work for an “activist company,” as Patagonia refers to itself, or if you鈥檙e just trying to make your employer care more about its environmental impact鈥攜ou will likely find some useful guidance here. Of course, adhering to Patagonia鈥檚 buy-less-stuff credo, you might want to borrow it from the library or share it with a friend, unless you feel you鈥檒l dog-ear every page and keep it close at hands for years of fighting the good fight.

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Humanity dumps 8 million tons of plastic into the oceans each year,听according to a听study published early this year in . That鈥檚听a听mind-blowingly large听figure, but it still听doesn鈥檛 account for the untold听billions of tiny plastic fibers from synthetic apparel that leave your washing machine and听enter rivers, lakes,听and oceans through wastewater treatment plants.听

These fibers, as well as tiny bits of degraded trash and microbeads from personal care products, have听generated a long list of questions and concerns among environmental scientists. In a听, Chelsea Rochman, a marine ecotoxicologist from the University of California, Davis, addressed one of the chief concerns: Are those fibers and other microplastics getting into our food system? The answer: Yes.听

To reach this conclusion,听Rochman and her colleagues purchased and dissected fish and bivalves from markets near Half Moon Bay, California, and compared their contents to those of fish and bivalves purchased from a market in Makassar, Indonesia. In both locations, more than half of the species and roughly a third of the individual fish and shellfish contained foreign objects鈥攎ost of which were听microplastics鈥攖hat the fish and shellfish filtered from the water or mistook for food. But while none of the debris collected from the Indonesian samples were fibers, the researchers concluded that the majority of debris collected from fish and shellfish caught along the California coast were听fibers from textiles.听(The study did not听distinguish between cotton and synthetic fibers, the latter of which are so prevalent in outdoor performance wear.)听

鈥淲e were shocked鈥澨齮hat none of the fish or shellfish from Indonesia contained fibers, says Rochman. She was not surprised, however, that the majority of debris in samples from California were fibers, since wastewater effluent from communities up and down the coast ends up in coastal waters and carries with it tiny fibers that evade filtration systems. The area in Indonesia from which the researchers purchased fish and shellfish, on the other hand, lacks that kind of wastewater treatment infrastructure, she says.听

鈥淧lus,鈥澨齭he adds, 鈥渄on鈥檛 forget that washing machines are a luxury we take for granted.鈥澨齈eople in undeveloped parts of Indonesia likely hand-wash their clothes outside.

Environmental scientists first raised听concerns about these microfibers following a 听published by British ecologist Anthony Browne听in 2011. Browne听found a preponderance of tiny polyester and acrylic fibers in beach sediment near wastewater treatment plants. More recently, researchers analyzed wastewater听treatment effluent headed into the Great Lakes and found 85 percent of the microplastics it contained were fibers.

The results of Rochman鈥檚 study further incriminate apparel as a source of ocean pollution. Yet听researchers听still don鈥檛 know听whether humans are at risk from ingesting microfibers,听many of which scientists suspect are plastic. And if we are, to what degree? (It鈥檚 also worth noting that shellfish and small fish eaten whole, such as sardines, are the main ways听humans will ingest the plastic debris, since in larger fish it settles in organs that are removed before听consumption.) Past studies have shown that microplastics do absorb toxins听such as DDT and PCB听from waterways, so when we eat fish that contain fibers, there鈥檚 at least the potential for chemical harm. Studies have also shown that microplastics harm lugworms and small organisms and that they can accumulate in fish鈥檚 guts and tissues, potentially weakening immune or听endocrine systems.
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Even though more fibers were found in California鈥檚 fish, Rochman makes clear that Indonesian consumers are still facing a more vexing public health problem. 鈥淲e found more plastic, overall, in Indonesia, and seafood is their main protein source, whereas it鈥檚 not for people in U.S.,鈥澨齭he explains.

Studies showing high quantities of synthetic microfibers in wastewater effluent and the unanswered questions around what harm they are doing to the ecosystem and public health has spurred the outdoor apparel industry to look inward. In our August issue,听we broke news that Patagonia has launched a project with the at the University of California, Santa Barbara to identify which synthetic materials in its supply chain shed fibers. Adam Fetcher*, communications director at听Patagonia, says research is still ongoing, but he鈥檚 confident the company will have findings to share by spring.听

The 听(OIA)听convened an industry task force dedicated to microfibers and ocean plastics and is working with its members, including Patagonia, and environmental groups such as 国产吃瓜黑料rs and Scientists for Conservation, to 鈥渂etter understand our impact and leverage points as an industry,鈥澨齭ays Nikki Hodgson, corporate responsibility coordinator for听the OIA.听

In Europe, the European Commission funded research by the Italian National Research Council鈥檚 , which is also midstream. So far, says project lead Maurizio Avella, the project has surveyed 830 European households about the fabrics they wear and performed some baseline tests on听a range of fabric types.听The survey showed that about听a quarter of all respondents鈥櫶齛pparel items are fully synthetic, with cotton-synthetic blends comprising 15 percent, and items made completely or mostly of natural fibers accounting for the remainder. Yet听most respondents said they wash all of their clothes using cycles designed for cotton, which exerts more centrifugal force than is actually needed to clean synthetic fabrics. Plus, the research has found that powder-based, high-pH detergents, oxidizers, and washing in hard, high-temperature water all contribute to high fiber loss from the apparel being laundered.听

One听potential solution would be to capture the tiny fibers before they go down the drain, but the appliance industry has yet to make any substantive steps toward researching the feasibility of integrating additional filters to washing machines to collect fibers (though some aftermarket retrofits, designed for keeping lint out of septic tanks, are available). Jill Notini, spokesperson for the , says the group is convening a technical group to discuss the issue.

Meanwhile, citizen scientists are also trying to aid听microfiber research. Last month, launched a multiyear research project to analyze water samples in Montana鈥檚 Gallatin River watershed in an attempt to quantify the inflow of synthetic fibers and other plastics into the water system close to their source. Rochman plans to continue her analysis as well. 鈥淚鈥檇 love to collect fish from all over world and analyze the chemicals in them,鈥澨齭he says.

This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Fetcher.

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