Microplastics are everywhere, even inside our bodies
I became fully aware that just about everything we touch is made of plastic. Not that I didn't know It before, but this was different, like realizing you've been living in the matrix and that reality out there is quite different and shocking.
So, I want you to perform an exercise starting today. From now on, either at home or at work, start noticing how many things around you that are made of plastic. Better yet, start noticing how much plastic you throw in the trash.
Now imagine the pile of plastic with the item you just threw away today. Multiply the size of this pile by 8 billion. How tall do you think it will be? You would not survive if you jumped out of it.
I'm not including professionals who dispose of much more plastic than at home. That would be me. Working in the healthcare industry, I became horrified by what I do daily: syringes, medication bottles, feeding tubes and their subsequent bags of liquid food, insulin syringes, drinking plastic cups, straws, and plastic gloves (yes, the ones we call rubber gloves are plastic, too). Everything in healthcare is made of plastic.
Like most people, I've been pleasantly confused and oblivious about plastic pollution; in the back of my mind, I had a pleasant idea that plastic would one day decompose somehow. "It doesn't matter; what is two hundred years in the history of the planet? They will all decompose one day; it just takes time." This was a denialist ideal I had in my brain so I could keep polluting to my heart's content and not feel bad about it.
But in the back of my mind, I knew somehow that something was missing in my little story. I heard about microplastics, but I didn't care because I thought that microplastics, too, would one day simply disappear. Out of sight, our of mind. So, what's the big worry?
Well, the big worry is that these little pieces of plastic will never decompose; they will just keep breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces until they become microscopic, like dust that you can't see but that contaminates every medium on this earth. We lose all trace of it, but it is present in water, soil, and air and finally makes it into the food chain and into our bodies.
We simply don't know the long term effects of exposure to microplastics. The difficulty in measuring it and knowing where it is play a big part in it. The biggest problem is perheps the ocean life contamination and our food stocks.
How much plastic is in the ocean
An incredible amount of plastic ends up in the ocean. Twelve million tonnes of plastic find their way into the ocean every single year. 9.5 million tonnes enter the oceans from the land, with 1.75 tonnes being chucked into the sea directly from the fishing and shipping industry.
One of the first conclusive studies was provided by Jenna Jambek, an engineer specialized in the management of waste. Her study took three and a half years. She looked at 192 countries in the world with coastlines and a fifty-kilometer buffer where waste might enter the ocean by either being washed or blown into the ocean.
It was estimated that 8 million metric tons of plastics entered the oceans in 2010. If nothing is done 10 times more plastic will enter our oceans in 2025. Once in the sea the plastic garbage is impossible to retrieve and traced.
It is also estimated that 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year from rivers. More than half of this plastic is less dense than the water, meaning that it will not sink once it encounters the sea.
These mountains of garbage get carried by currents and form large islands of plastic.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is the largest of the five offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. It is located halfway between Hawaii and California. There are approximately 51 trillion microscopic pieces of plastic weighing 269,000 tons in each of these accumulation zones.
The stronger, more buoyant plastics show resiliency in the marine environment, allowing them to be transported over extended distances. They persist at the sea surface as they go offshore, transported by converging currents and finally accumulating in the patch.
Once these plastics enter the gyre, they are unlikely to leave the area until they degrade into smaller microplastics under the effects of the sun, waves, and marine life. As more plastics are discarded into the environment, the concentration of microplastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will only continue to increase.
However, scientists have found that these garbage patches are not stable islands filled with plastics like the popular belief. These garbage patches are leaky, and plastics from one pile might end up in another pile. They are all connected to each other. Plastic that originates in India can end up in the United States, and it might take ten years.
Becasue of such a lengthy time in the ocean, plastics decay and break down into small pieces smaller than five millimeters, called microplastics. And far from what is usually assumed, these islands don't look anything like they are often talked about. The garage patches are a very thin soup of plastic pieces floating around and not like a neatly contained island that aggregates the garage, keeping the rest of the oceans clean. They create a dirty, soupy mess of pieces of plastic in the ocean.
These microplastics are at the heart of the problem because they are much more numerous than macroplastics (the larger pieces), and their ability to enter the environment and animal life is much larger. More studies are being conducted to evaluate how these plastics break down and enter the environment.
The disappearing plastic garbage
Due to the increased amount of plastics dumped in the ocean every year, it was expected that we would find these islands of plastic to be increasing in size but that isn't the case.
Paradoxically, in our seas and oceans, we can only find a small percentage of plastics that find their way to into the ocean. No one knows what happens to it. The first logical conclusion is that they sink to the bottom of the ocean. Another assumption is that they disintegrate into tiny pieces and we lose all trace of it. Scientists worldwide are investigating and wondering if this phenomenon is modifying the ecosystem without us being able to measure the consequences.
99% of the plastic that should be floating in the oceans is missing. Even accounting for the plastic that washes up on beaches or is trapped in Arctic ice, millions of tons have simply disappeared. As most plastic never deteriorates, it simply breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that are invisible to the human eye. Small, mostly invisible, and toxic, they are home to a new ecosystem: the plastisphere.
The hunt for where plastic is is not new; it started twenty years ago. Researcher Francois Galgani is well known for his studies and his commitment to the oceans. In 1992, Galgani created a groundbreaking study checking the seabed for plastic on board Nautile, his legendary submarine. He found that most plastic bottles and larger pieces of plastic end up in the deep cannons at the bottom of the ocean. They don't break down because there is no light and little oxygen at these depths. It is not conclusive how much of the missing plastic is situated in these deep ocean ravines.
According to Gangani, the presence of plastic garbage became a navigation indicator that one is in a sub-ocean ravine.
But scientists are only arriving at a possible conclusion: Microplastics find their way to the bottom of the ocean in the sea bed. No concrete proof was found until 2015 when marine biologist Lucy Woodall examined samples of deep-sea sediments thousands of meters beneath the surface. They were found in worms, corals, and sediments. The concentration of microplastics in the bottom was a thousand times higher than on the surface.
Conclusion
The sad conclusion is that plastic pollution in the ocean is much more problematic than once thought. Because the breakdown of plastics into microplastics is so pervasive, it finds its way into the food chain. Twenty five percent of the fish we eat is contaminated with microplastics, and one third of muscles is contaminated.
Microplastics not only have their cocktail of harmful chemicals, but when they are in the weather, they act as magnets aggregating other pollutants found in the seawater, such as agricultural and urban runoffs. The fish eat these microplastics and these chemical cocktails, and we eat the fish.
In a laboratory study conducted by Colins Johnson. His toxicology laboratory produced one of the few studies showing that microplastics can cross the intestinal walls and migrate toward the circulatory system in both the blood and lymphatic fluid. It can end up in other organs without us knowing the consequences.
Microplastics are also vectors for harmful bacteria that can infect ocean food stocks and cause the migration of unwanted organisms worldwide.
Recent research indicates the presence of microplastics in human testicular tissue. Microplastics are defined as plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters in diameter, which raise concerns due to their persistence and potential endocrine-disrupting properties.
The accumulation of microplastics within the testicular environment is associated with a deterioration in sperm quality. This connection is evident through:
Decreased sperm count: Long-term exposure to these pollutants can result in lower sperm production.
Impaired sperm motility: Affected sperm may demonstrate a reduced ability to move effectively, which is crucial for fertilization.
Sperm morphology alterations: The shape and structure of sperm can be affected, indicating potential fertility issues.
Microplastics threaten humanity on a much larger scale than previously thought. Due to its difficult detection, we don't know how many microplastics and harmful chemicals we are ingesting. The only sure hard fact is that it is increasing at an alarming rate.
Please watch Oceans: The Mystery of the Missing Plastics
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Image by Friedrich Teichmann from Pixabay
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