Plastic pellets known as ‘nurdles’ are polluting beaches and waterways

By David Montgomery, Stateline.org

SEADRIFT, Texas — Aboard an aluminum skiff or one of her five kayaks, fourth-generation shrimper and fisherwoman Diane Wilson often plies the coastal bays and streams near her tiny hometown of Seadrift, Texas.

But instead of fishing for shrimp, black drum or blue crabs, these days the 77-year-old is an environmental activist looking for “nurdles”— tiny plastic pellets that are polluting beaches and waterways in Texas and around the country.

The minuscule spheres, typically less than 5 millimeters in diameter, are the basic building blocks of nearly all plastic products. But when they are mishandled during manufacturing or transport, they can slip through storm drains and into waterways, posing a health threat to both wildlife and humans. They are difficult to clean up, and act like sponges for toxins as they progress through the food chain.

An estimated 445,970 metric tons of nurdles make their way into oceans annually.

“They’re everywhere,” said Wilson, who is now executive director of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, an environmental group focused on protecting Matagorda Bay, on the Texas Gulf Coast. “They’re a real threat to human health and the planet, and we’re trying to protect the communities and the fishermen and the bays.”

California enacted a law designed to curb nurdle pollution in 2007. Now the issue is gaining attention elsewhere: In 2025, legislators in Illinois, New Jersey and Virginia introduced bills.

But the threat of nurdle pollution is beginning to resonate even beyond such left-leaning states. In Wilson’s deeply conservative Texas, a coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, business leaders and local officials is pushing for more nurdle regulation, arguing that the pellets pose an economic threat to coastal communities.

State Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Democrat from the Austin-area town of Dripping Springs, said in an interview that even some in the plastics industry “want to see this issue get solved.” Zwiener has introduced nurdle bills during the past two legislative sessions and plans to do so again when the legislature reconvenes in 2027.

“I think some members of industry know the black eye they’re getting on this and would like to see some curtailment of the worst actors,” Zwiener said.

The plastics industry has long acknowledged that many nurdles leak into the environment. In 1991, it created a voluntary program called Operation Clean Sweep, under which participating nurdle-handling operations commit to certain practices to prevent spills.

Charlotte Dreizen, who oversees Operation Clean Sweep for the Plastics Industry Association, said more than two-thirds of U.S. plastics production occurs at a participating facility.

But Wilson and other critics say the program doesn’t include meaningful reporting requirements, oversight or consequences.

“They’re just being sloppy, and they can do better, but nobody’s making them do it,” said Wilson. “They obviously have to be forced into it.”

In 2019, Wilson was a victorious co-plaintiff in a lawsuit that resulted in a record $50 million settlement against Formosa Plastics, a petrochemical manufacturer that illegally dumped billions of nurdles and other pollutants into Lavaca Bay and other Texas waterways. It was the largest-ever settlement of a Clean Water Act suit filed by private citizens. Instead of being awarded to the plaintiffs, the money went into a fund to pay for projects to reverse pollution in the affected waterways.

Now, Wilson is gearing up for another lawsuit: In December, she filed a 60-day legal notice of intent to sue Dow Chemical Company, alleging it has been illegally discharging plastic pellets from its plant near Seadrift.

Part of a larger problem

Nurdles are a type of microplastic pollution, but not all microplastics are nurdles. Microplastics also include microbeads, which are used as exfoliating agents in cosmetics and toothpaste, and tiny particles from broken-down plastic litter, packaging and synthetic fibers. Some are so small they can’t be seen without a microscope.

Microplastics have been detected in cities’ tap water, in bottled water, in rivers and throughout the Great Lakes. Scientists estimate that adults ingest the equivalent of one credit card per week in microplastics, and studies in animals and human cells suggest they could be connected to cancer, heart attacks, reproductive problems and other harms.

Nurdles are larger than many other microplastics. They can be seen with the naked eye, and their uniform shape and size make them easier to identify and collect. This past spring, volunteers scooped up nearly 50,000 plastic pellets over an 11-day period at more than 200 sites across 14 countries, 29 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

Texas sites, mostly on the coast, yielded the highest count: 23,115 nurdles. California (4,167), Michigan (3,681), South Carolina (3,094) and Ohio (2,851) also reported substantial amounts.

In the Upper Midwest, environmental advocates are rallying behind pellet-control legislation to protect the five Great Lakes that collectively serve as an economic engine for eight states.

“I think there’s concern up and down and all around in terms of making sure we can prevent this from having a devastating impact in our regions,” said Andrea Densham, senior policy adviser for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

On the West Coast, nurdles washing onto the coast of Oregon from the Pacific Ocean can be so numerous that “it looks like pellets have become part of the sand,” said Celeste Meiffren-Swango, director of Environment Oregon. “More and more pellets are ending up in the environment and they’re not getting taken out of the environment.”

A question of economics

In Texas, which has at least 36 plastic production plants, Zwiener’s bill — which stalled in committee — would have classified nurdles as non-hazardous industrial waste, triggering record-keeping and containment rules. It also would have required plastics facilities to monitor surrounding waters and conduct monthly audits of spills.

During a 2025 hearing on the legislation, Logan Harrell of the Texas Chemistry Council told lawmakers that the “industry is already voluntarily addressing the issue,” by improving how it responds to spills and doing more to prevent them. The bill “would result in overregulation and likely add complications based on some ambiguous language and other burdensome requirements,” Harrell said.

Though Zwiener’s bill and a companion bill in the state Senate failed to advance, supporters say the mood may be shifting as more plastic pellets show up on Texas beaches.

In October, organizations representing recreational fishermen, oyster harvesters, tourism groups and others sent a letter to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, urging him to direct the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to adopt standards to prevent the discharge of nurdles into waterways as part of its scheduled revision of water quality standards.

The letter emphasizes the potential economic impact of the pollution, noting that the state’s outdoor recreation industry supports nearly 300,000 jobs, $14 billion in salaries and adds $31 billion in total value to the Texas economy.

The agency was considering a ban on plastics discharges during its last revision of the rules in 2022, but reportedly backed away amid industry pressure. Abbott’s office and the agency declined to comment on the letter.

No city in Texas is more dependent on clean beaches than Galveston, a coastal city of more than 53,000 that draws up to 8 million visitors each year. In October, the city council unanimously approved a resolution echoing the letter the fishing and tourism groups sent to the Texas governor.

“It’s been a problem, long term,” said Joanie Steinhaus, ocean program director at the Galveston office of the Turtle Island Restoration Network, a California-based nonprofit that advocates for oceans and marine wildlife. The group sponsors regular nurdle patrols on Galveston beaches, and volunteers have collected more than 17,000 nurdles in the past five years, according to Steinhaus.

Recently, the anti-nurdle effort has gotten a boost from J.P. Bryan, a prominent Texas oilman and historic preservationist who founded the Bryan Museum in Galveston. Bryan wrote a widely publicized op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, in which he shared his childhood memories of the beaches of Freeport, Texas, and called for action to curb nurdle pollution.

“For Texans who value both economic growth and environmental stewardship, addressing the scourge of plastic nurdles is not only an ecological imperative, but an economic necessity,” Bryan wrote.

“This problem needs solving, preferably by those causing the problem,” Bryan continued, “but if they won’t, then good government can and should prevent companies from causing economic and environmental damage through plastic pellet spills.”

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