Almost two years after the 'Toconao' ship spill, plastic pellets continue to appear on Galician beaches

A Coruña.- Pellets, small plastic balls, continue to appear on the beaches of Galicia as the second anniversary of the 'Toconao' ship spill approaches, which lost its cargo in December 2023 in Portuguese waters.

A walk along Ber beach in Pontedeume (A Coruña) reveals that pellets continue to wash up on Galician shores, such as those collected by a local resident this Tuesday. This highlights the difficulty of completely eliminating the trace of the spill and its dispersal through marine currents.

The second anniversary of the 'Toconao' ship accident, which lost 26.3 tons of these small plastic pellets, coincides with the final approval in the European Parliament of a regulation designed to prevent this type of pollution.

It was in December 2023 when the Liberian-flagged 'Toconao' lost six containers north of Portugal, which caused the massive arrival of these granules to the Galician coast in early 2024 and revealed a major environmental problem.

The Galician environmental crisis spurred and strengthened the new European regulations, approved this October, which seek to force companies to implement risk management plans and reinforce packaging in maritime transport to prevent future disasters.

Thus, the persistence of microplastics on beaches not only recalls the 'Toconao' incident, but also justifies the urgency of a European legislative response to the risks that the transport of these goods represents for the marine ecosystem.

When the ship lost its cargo, researchers warned of the problem of ingesting pellets by consuming fish that had previously eaten them, as it can be harmful when they enter the food chain, even though the material of these pellets is not toxic. EFEverde

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