Plastic Poisoning The Food Chain
A new report has shown that small particles of plastic are polluting all oceans around the world.
Microscopic particles of plastic could be poisoning the oceans, according to a British team of researchers.
They report that small plastic pellets called "mermaids’ tears", which are the result of industry and domestic waste, have spread across the world’s seas.
Plastic rubbish, from drinks bottles and fishing nets to the ubiquitous carrier bag, ends up in the world’s oceans.
They found plastic particles smaller than grains of sand.
So there are tiny plastic particles floating around which we can barely see, let alone recognise as being plastic. The obvious concern with this is whether or not this plastic is getting into the food chain and whether we are eating plastic or toxics from plastic when we eat fish.
Thompson and his team conducted experiments on three species of filter feeders in their laboratory. They looked at the barnacle, the lugworm and the common amphipod or sand-hopper, and found that all three readily ingested plastic as they fed along the seabed.
"These creatures are eaten by others along food chain," Dr Thompson explained. "It seems an inevitable consequence that it will pass along the food chain. There is the possibility that chemicals could be transferred from plastics to marine organisms."
Obviously they need to continue to do research but it doesn’t look promising. Who knows what the effects could be on marine wildlife as well as the human population. Plastic can take many, many years to break down completely so there is nothing that can be done about this water pollution now. All that can be done is to prevent this from happening in the future.
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