Archaeologists have a vital role to play in documenting COVID-19 waste but also in informing the policies that may mitigate its longer-term impact, a new study suggests.
Archaeologists have a vital role to play in documenting COVID-19 waste but also in informing the policies that may mitigate its longer-term impact, a new study suggests.
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is creating a viral archive, an archaeological record of history in the making. One aspect of this archive is increased environmental pollution, not least through discarded face-masks and gloves, collectively known as PPE, that characterise the pandemic.
These items of plastic waste have become symbolic of the pandemic and have now entered the archaeological record, in particular face-masks.
In the UK alone, 748 million items of PPE, amounting to 14 million items a day, were delivered to hospitals in the two or so months from 25 February 2020, comprising 360 million gloves, 158 million masks, 135 million aprons and one million gowns.
Read more at University of York
Image: The stomach contents of a Green sea turtle following a necropsy. The contents include a face mask, part of the PPE provision of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Credit: Kathy Townsend)
