Be mindful of what you do with your disposable covid PPE - that’s things like masks and gloves - because like a lot of human rubbish they’re finding their way into the lives of animals with catastrophic consequences.

There is little doubt that personal protective equipment, or PPE, has saved countless lives by slowing the spread of covid-19 and taking the pressure off health services. But while masks and gloves have saved humans lives, they’re killing animals, according to new research out this week.

Like a lot of the plastic and other waste that we humans throw away, disposable masks and gloves are finding their way into the environment and the lives of wild animals. According to the Guardian, reporting on the findings of the study, victims include a “fish trapped in the finger of a rubber glove in the Netherlands, a penguin in Brazil with a mask in its stomach and a fox in the UK entangled in a mask”.

Having trawled social media and news reports, researchers from several Dutch institutions including Leiden University and the Naturalis Biodiversity Centerin, assembled a database of reports from around the world before inviting people to notify them of any other incidents via their website.

In 2010, 31.9 million tonnes of ‘mismanaged’ plastic waste was estimated to have found its way into our oceans alone, not including the waste that stayed on land. While disposable PPE may only make up a fraction of this, it is no less devastating to the individual victims including birds, fish, crabs, bats, hedgehogs and monkeys, according to reports from Canada, the US, France, the Netherlands, the UK and Malaysia.

The data also reveals reports of dogs, cats and even penguins swallowing masks. Just as with ocean-going turtles - 52 per cent of whom are estimated to have eaten plastic bags after mistaking them for jellyfish and algae - plastic and other waste in animals’ stomachs can cause them to starve to death or lead to other health problems.

The research paper based on the collated reports, entitled The effects of COVID-19 litter on animal life and published in the journal Animal Biology, concluded with several recommendations on how to tackle this problem, such as a focus on citizen science initiatives to collect data during beach cleans inspired by the work already being conducted by projects like the Great British Beach Clean in monitoring PPE waste. 

The RSPCA is also well aware of the problem. Following the rescue of a gull in Essex, UK, who was found with a face mask wrapped tightly around his legs, the RSPCA issued advice to the public to ‘snip the straps’ off masks very much like with plastic six-pack rings.

Chris Sherwood, the RSPCA’s chief executive, said: “For many years the public have been aware of the message to cut up plastic six-pack rings before throwing them away to stop animals getting tangled in them, and now we are keen to get out the message that the same should be done for face masks too – as very sadly, animals are susceptible to getting tangled up in them.

“Now that face masks are increasingly the norm, our snip the straps message is more important than ever as thousands of these masks are being thrown away every day. We’re concerned discarded face masks could become a significant hazard, particularly to wild animals and birds.

“Our RSPCA officers have had to rescue animals from getting tangled in face masks and we expect incidents may go up as time goes on, so the best thing to do is to simply cut the elastic ear straps in half before throwing it away.”

Quoting research from the UCL Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, the Dutch researchers urged people to switch to reusable PPE which they say would cut down on 95 per cent of all PPE-related waste. They said in closing: “People may suffer from the coronavirus pandemic, but nature is getting sick of our plastic.”

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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