EPA to study hazards of plastic debris on remote Hawaiian island

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-plastic-debris-hawaiian-island-epa-superfund-20131118,0,4102722.story

EPA to study hazards of plastic debris on remote Hawaiian island

By Tony Barboza
November 19, 2013

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will study a remote island used 
as an airstrip in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands that is often 
littered with plastic debris, the first step in a process that could 
eventually place it on the list of the country’s most hazardous sites.

In a letter to an environmental group, the agency said it will study 
Tern Island, part of a coral reef atoll about 550 miles northwest of 
Honolulu that is a breeding ground for millions of seabirds.

The decision came in response to a petition filed last year by the 
Center for Biological Diversity. The group asked the EPA to study 
listing a 1,200-mile span of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and part 
of the so-called Pacific Garbage Patch as a federal Superfund site 
because of the amount of plastic debris that floats on ocean currents 
and washes ashore.

“That was a sort of big ask,” said Emily Jeffers, an attorney for the 
Center for Biological Diversity. But she called the agency’s decision to 
study Tern Island “an incredibly important first step towards 
understanding the hazards plastic pollution poses to wildlife.”

EPA to study hazards of plastic debris on remote Hawaiian island