Tiny pellets called 'nurdles' are leeching into the ocean. A new Shell plant could produce 80 trillion of them a year.

Tyrone Siu/Reuters

Hundreds of millions of nurdles were knocked off a vessel during a typhoon in Hong Kong in 2012.

• Small plastic pellets called "nurdles" are a $4 around the world.
• Each year, around 250,000 tons of nurdles $4, where they're at risk of getting $4.
• A new Shell facility north of Pittsburgh intends to produce 80 trillion nurdles each year.
• The nurdles will be sent to manufacturing facilities to be turned into plastic items like car parts and food packaging.
• $4

When heavy winds swept through Hong Kong during a storm in July 2012, hundreds of millions of tiny, plastic pellets - each one no bigger than a lentil - fell off a freight ship.

The particles, known as "nurdles," spread through the water around Hong Kong and blanketed the shore. A local cleanup volunteer $4 that she'd waded through knee-deep piles of plastic.

The incident was a stark reminder of this common, yet little known, form of pollution. Each year, around $4 leach into the ocean. Researchers are $4 marine animals could $4 like fish eggs. Scientists have $4 of birds and fish, though they're still working to determine the health risks for these species.

Nurdles can spill on their way to becoming 'virgin' plastic

Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, cleans up nurdles that spilled from railroad cars in the town of Vernon, California.

Manufacturing companies use nurdles to make virgin plastic - plastic that hasn't previously been recycled. The particles are deliberately small (around 2 to 5 millimeters in diameter), which makes them easier to transport and mold into plastic products like food packaging, containers, phone cases, or car parts. These virgin-plastic items are generally $4 than recycled plastic, and they aren't as vulnerable to degrading over time the way recycled plastic products are.

But during transit, there's always a risk that nurdles could fall from railroad cars or spill out of $4 and make their way into nearby waterways.

In 2018, $4 wound up in a stream in Pennsylvania after a semi-truck that was carrying them crashed along a highway. The following year, piles of nurdles $4 near Charleston, South Carolina. The state's Department of Health and Environmental Control later attributed the pollution to a spill from a local shipping company.

After the nurdle spill in Hong Kong, the government $4 to wash their fish thoroughly in case the animals had ingested the particles, which led to a dip in fish prices. The plastic also washed up during the spawning season of green sea turtles, whose environment was supposed to be protected from June to October.

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Shell is building a new 'nurdle' plant in Pittsburgh

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President Donald Trump and energy secretary Rick Perry tour the Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex with Shell executives on August 13, 2019.

In the US, oil and gas companies have plans to $4 that support the virgin plastic industry. That includes a new Shell facility north of Pittsburgh, which $4. (The facility gained national attention after $4 reported that its contractors were $4 in August in order to receive their paychecks.)

Construction on that facility $4, but once complete, the plant is slated to produce around $4, or around $4.

It is also slated to have $4, with 3,300 freight cars to transport the pellets to manufacturing centers. Production facilities like Shell's typically use vacuum-like hoses to carry the pellets to these cars. But Miriam Gordon, the director of the advocacy group $4, told Quartz that process can result in spills at the attachment point between the hose and the freight car.

If nurdles were to be released into the environment in Pittsburgh, there's a risk that they could travel to nearby waterways like the Ohio River. (Shell $4 there to remove litter.)

"When we start producing product, we will commit to zero pellet, flake, or powder loss into the environment from handling operations," Shell said in a statement to Business Insider. The company added that it is collaborating with local groups in the Pennsylvania community to encourage more plastics collection and recycling.

Tyrone Siu/Reuters

Plastic pellets gathered during a clean-up of a bank along Hong Kong's Lamma island in August 2012.

$4 that identifies nurdles as a pollutant, which allows it to penalize nurdle producers under the $4, a federal law that makes it illegal to discharge pollutants into waterways.

However, as researchers learn more about how nurdles affect human health and marine life, that information could inform how states decide to target such pollution in the future.

For now, scientists suspect that the small bits of plastic that people ingest through food or drink could $4 like phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) $4. Nurdles can also $4 like mercury or the insecticide DDT from rivers and oceans. But the risks to human health are still unknown.