Planet or Plastic?

MICROPLASTICS AND THE THREATS IT POSSESS

We often find tiny bits of plastic in the fish and crustaceans we eat. Scientists are working
hard to figure out what are the effects of these tiny bits on our health.

Microplastics are very tiny pieces of plastic that pollute the environment. Small fragments of

plastic that are less than 5 mm (0.2 inch) in size, those are present in the environment as a
result of plastic pollution. Sunlight, wind, waves, and heat break down the larger plastic into
smaller bits that look a lot like food to plankton, bivalves, fish, and even whales.

[1]
What you see above is a water flea which is three millimeters long and the green glowing
particles is ingested microplastics. In a lab, fleas were exposed to round beads and
irregularly shaped plastic fragments in amounts higher than in nature. The irregular pieces
pose a greater threat as they can clump and get stuck in the gut.

Debra Lee Magadini is one of few researchers working on the effects of micro plastics on
living being. In a lab at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
New York; she prepared a slide and positioned under a microscope and flicked on an
ultraviolet light on it. Scrutinizing the digestive tract of a shrimp she just bought at a fish
market that very same day. After examining every millimetre of the slide, “This shrimp is
fibre city!” she exclaimed. Inside its digestive tract, seven tiny pieces of plastic, dyed with
red stain, which glowed brightly.

All over the globe, researchers like Magadini are staring through microscopes at tiny pieces
of plastic—fibers, fragments, or microbeads that have made their way into marine and
freshwater species, both caught wild and farmed. Scientists have found microplastics in 114
aquatic species, and more than 50% of species those end up on our dinner plates. And now
they are trying to understand what that means for human health.

So far scientist lacks evidence that microplastics (fragments smaller than one-fifth of an
inch) are affecting fish which are generally consumed by humans at the population level.
Our food supply doesn’t seem to be affected and under threat at least for now. But enough
research has been done now to show that the fish smaller in size and shellfish we enjoy are
suffering from the omnipresence of this type plastic.

Experiments have shown that microplastics not only damage aquatic creatures but turtles
and birds as well. They block digestive tracts and diminish the urge to eat and results in
alter feeding behaviour. All of which reduce the growth and reproductive output. Their
stomachs stuffed with plastic forces these species to starve and die.

Scientists remain concerned about the effects of marine plastics on human-health because,
in the end they are omnipresent in nature and they will eventually degrade more with time
resulting in nanoplastics, which measure less than 100 billionths of a meter (for comparison
a human DNA strand measures 2.5 nanometers in diameter)—in other words, they are
invisible to naked eye. Alarmingly these tiny plastics can penetrate cells and move into
tissues and organs. But because researchers lack diagnostic methods to identify
nanoplastics in food, thus they are unable to get any data on their occurrence or absorption
by humans.

“I think we’ll know the answers in five to 10 years’ time,” Magadini says.

BIO-CONCENTRATION
Bio concentration is the accumulation of a chemical in an organism when the source of
chemical contamination is solely water. Bio concentration is a term that was created to study
the effects of aquatic toxicology on the living beings.

In addition to mechanical or physical effects, microplastics also have been found guilty for
chemical impacts, because free-floating contaminants that wash off from the land and into
the seas—such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs), and heavy metals—tend to stick very fast to their surfaces, which are then
absorbed by the host. [2]

Heavy metals like chromium in soft drink bottles, PCBs from the electrical and plastic
waste dumped in water and PAHs from petroleum refining activities required to make
virgin plastic are released in the environment, degrading the quality of life for all organisms
present in that ecosystem. [3] All these pollutants have been linked to cancer and
neurological disorders other in humans that eat fish and shellfish and adversely affect
survival, growth and ability to fight disease in other organisms.

[4]

Name: Sudit Bhunia

Roll no: 9, Div: A

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-
health-pollution-waste-microplastics/

[2] https://sciencing.com/effects-bioaccumulation-ecosystem-13721.html

[3] https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/heavy-metals-in-indian-plastic-bottles

[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_build_up_of_toxins_in_a_food_chain.s
vg