Scientists are turning plastic into painkillers

Herald Sun

6 hours ago

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Plastic water bottles litter the roads, parks, and waterways and take forever to break down. Now researchers have figured out how to turn the waste into paracetamol.
We're seeing plastic water bottles recycled into bikinis, bags, furniture, vases, art, and clothes, but now scientists have figured out how to turn waste from the rubbish into painkillers.
According to CNN, more than one million bottles of water are sold every minute worldwide, and around 85 per cent end up as waste.
Lead author of a paper explaining the conversion process from litter to paracetamol, Stephen Wallace, told The Guardian it 'is a way to just completely hoover up plastic waste'.
How is plastic turned into paracetamol?
The research team from the University of Edinburgh took a plastic used in bottles and food packaging, called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and converted it into a new material.
This was then converted into a solid called Para-Aminobenzoic Acid (PABA), likely via a chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement, which would usually only occur under intense lab conditions.
But the scientists found the conversion happened spontaneously when they incubated the material with a strain of E coli.
But the scientists found the conversion happened spontaneously when they incubated the material with a strain of E coli.
The PABA was then made into paracetamol, or acetaminophen, after the team added genes from mushrooms and soil bacteria to the E coli.
They noted that PABA is usually made in other substances' cells, and is essential for bacteria to grow. But the genetically modified E coli blocked the typical pathways, so the material from the PET had to be used instead.
But the analgesic is typically made from benzene, which comes from petroleum. Image: iStock
The bacteria facilitated the conversion in less than 24 hours, and the researchers claimed emissions remained low.
How is paracetamol usually made?
Another research team from the University of Bath's Department of Chemistry and Institute for Sustainability previously managed to make both paracetamol and ibuprofen from a chemical derived from pine trees, which is also a waste product from paper manufacturing.
But the analgesic is typically made from benzene, which comes from petroleum, so researchers are excited by the possibility of a more sustainable production option for the widely sold drug.
We can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time.Image: Getty
The team doesn't believe plastic waste will be a part of the commercial production of the painkiller for a while, but Wallace explained, 'what this technology shows is that by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time.'
'It enables, for the first time, a pathway from plastic waste to paracetamol, which is not possible using biology alone, and it's not possible using chemistry alone', the lead author added.
Originally published as Scientists are turning plastic into painkillers