Plastic seems to have invaded the remotest ocean floors in the frozen Arctic as well as our bodies, for it enters our bodies through respiration and through water as we continue to consumed micro-plastic infused water on a daily basis.
As it might come as a shock but over a period of a week, one can ingest as much plastic that goes into the making of a credit card, revealed a recent WWF International study. The microplastic enters our system mainly from the water we drink like it also finds its way into our body through foods like “shellfish”.
Over the past five decades, there has been a surge in the plastic manufacturing which also led to a widespread use of plastic especially in the form of disposable products which have left “a devastating effect on the environment” starting from chocking marine animals and littering beaches.
Plastic is not a biodegradable product in general, therefore if breaks down in small particles and finds its way into practically everything even contaminating out food chain. If we can collect the plastic we ingest then within a week’s time we could produce a bottle cap and in six months a “cereal bowl full”.
And if we further escalate, within a decade we would have consumed nearly “2.5 kg” of plastic. Take a notch higher and within a decade we could find 20kg of microplastic in our system. Thava Palanisami, from the University of Newcastle in Australia has worked on the WWF study and he is of the opinion that the full impact these ingested “micro and nano-sized plastic particles” can have on our health is still not known. In his words:
“All we know is that we are ingesting it and that it has the potential to cause toxicity. That is definitely a cause for concern”.
References:
reuters.com
As it might come as a shock but over a period of a week, one can ingest as much plastic that goes into the making of a credit card, revealed a recent WWF International study. The microplastic enters our system mainly from the water we drink like it also finds its way into our body through foods like “shellfish”.
Over the past five decades, there has been a surge in the plastic manufacturing which also led to a widespread use of plastic especially in the form of disposable products which have left “a devastating effect on the environment” starting from chocking marine animals and littering beaches.
Plastic is not a biodegradable product in general, therefore if breaks down in small particles and finds its way into practically everything even contaminating out food chain. If we can collect the plastic we ingest then within a week’s time we could produce a bottle cap and in six months a “cereal bowl full”.
And if we further escalate, within a decade we would have consumed nearly “2.5 kg” of plastic. Take a notch higher and within a decade we could find 20kg of microplastic in our system. Thava Palanisami, from the University of Newcastle in Australia has worked on the WWF study and he is of the opinion that the full impact these ingested “micro and nano-sized plastic particles” can have on our health is still not known. In his words:
“All we know is that we are ingesting it and that it has the potential to cause toxicity. That is definitely a cause for concern”.
References:
reuters.com
