Patrick Flanary: It’s been almost four weeks since a 300-foot blade on an offshore wind turbine collapsed south of the Vineyard. And of course, a lot of debris washed ashore Nantucket, especially. This has raised a lot of concerns about lasting environmental and health impacts. Eve Zuckoff looked into this and joins us now. Hi there, eve.

Eve Zuckoff: Hi there, Patrick.

Patrick Flanary: GE Vernova supplied the blade to Vineyard Wind. Vineyard wind owns the turbines and has since hired a firm outside to evaluate the dangers the debris poses to the environment. What does that report tell us?

Eve Zuckoff: So this report from Arcadis — that’s the firm — addresses concerns about PFAS, these forever chemicals linked to a bunch of health issues. It says the blades themselves contain no PFAS. But on the exterior side of the blade, there are these small “aerodynamic add-ons” that do contain Teflon, which is made with PFAS, but it is a relatively tiny amount. Overall, the report says that the turbine blade is primarily made of fiberglass, semi-rigid foam, and polyester resins, so the debris materials are, “inert and soluble, stable and nontoxic.” Go ahead and remember that word. And they’re actually a lot like what’s found in textiles, boats and planes. But the report emphasizes that more environmental reviews are ongoing. And this is only the initial assessment.

Patrick Flanary: The debris is stable and nontoxic. Okay. If you spoke to an independent scientist about this report, who’d you speak to and what did they tell you?

Eve Zuckoff: I spoke with Valeria La Saponara, who’s a professor at the University of California, Davis, in mechanical and aerospace engineering. She said she’s been studying the materials used to build wind turbines for about 25 years, and reviewed GE Vernova’s Material Safety Data sheets, which detail the composition of the blade materials. Here’s what she thought.

 “Any time that you see polyester, vinylaster, gel coat, and PVC forms, these are all carcinogenic materials,” she said. “So it’s not going to kill you all in the next week. But this has possible long term consequences.”

Eve Zuckoff:  Ultimately, she found Arcadis’s characterization of the materials as “nontoxic” was rushed at best, misleading or even BS at worst -- her word, not mine.

See all CAI’s coverage of the Vineyard Wind turbine blade collapse

Patrick Flanary: Okay, well, debris, as we know, it just keeps washing ashore, right? It was Nantucket at first. Now parts of Chatham got it. We’ve seen it in Falmouth this week. It’s unlikely all of it’s going to get cleaned up. But what happens over the next, I don’t know, a month or so?

Eve Zuckoff: That’s the tricky part. I mean, we don’t know how much debris has been cleaned up in the first place. We know that truckloads were taken off Nantucket beaches the first few days, and there’s been a perimeter around the failed turbine since the early days to help clean up what falls off. But you’re right. More and more debris keeps washing up across Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and now Cape Cod. The thing is: big, heavy fiberglass pieces are actually more manageable. They don’t break down as easily. They sink so they can get picked up pretty quickly. To La Saponara, the bigger concern is the smaller, foam pieces that float away in the currents.

“The PVC foam is the one that is going to be a lot more challenging to remove from the ocean surface,” she said. “But if they actually get their act together and remove all these other materials, then, the impacts should be minimized.”

Eve Zuckoff:  So some of the materials are more stable, she said. But the longer they’re in the ocean exposed to UV light and seawater, the more they get broken down, eaten by birds, fish, and ultimately humans, because we’re all kind of part of this same food chain.

Patrick Flanary:  Indeed we are. Okay. Vineyard wind is the company. GE Vernova is the blade maker. Tell us how they both responded to those concerns.

Eve Zuckoff:  Yeah, well, we reached out to GE Vernova here and Vineyard Wind. Vineyard wind pointed us over to GE Vernova. That’s kind of a familiar thing in this larger story. And and we asked about the debris cleanup, how much GE Vernova had been aware of what was recovered, and why the materials were described as nontoxic. But they didn’t provide us with an additional statement at this point.

Patrick Flanary: All right. So it’s tempting for a lot of people to see this debris from the blade and feel as though offshore wind is quickly becoming a problem. But how are experts responding to that fear?

Eve Zuckoff: You know, everyone I talked to, they urged perspective here. They said, look, the main alternative to offshore wind is oil and gas. How many oil spills have we seen pollute our ocean? How much greenhouse gas does burning oil create each year? That just plunges us deeper and deeper into the worst effects of climate change. We can also talk about this turbine blade debris in the context of other marine debris. We know one garbage truck full of plastic is discarded into our oceans every minute. Locally, a ton of debris is coming from smashed up boats and fishing gear. And that is made with the same fiberglass as the stuff coming from this turbine blade. So Laura Ludwig, who runs the Marine Debris Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, said she is not happy to see this debris, but its impact has to be right-sized.

 “As far as plastic and marine debris goes,” she said, “this is a drop in the bucket, and the rest of our industries are creating massive inputs that we don’t even blink at.”

Patrick Flanary: Laura Ludwig love her. She picks up more things than you can imagine, by the way, so she knows debris.

Eve Zuckoff: She does know debris. And because of that, she urged people to redirect their concerns to really evaluate their own plastic use, and even, as you say, participate in local beach cleanups.

Patrick Flanary:  Eve Zuckoff following this story for us. Thanks so much for your time.

Eve Zuckoff: Thank you, Patrick.

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