Photo: “The unprecedented plastic waste tide plaguing our oceans and shores, can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral change on our part…” Captions and Photo: © SAF — Coastal Care
Excerpts; The largest habitat for life on Earth is the deep ocean. It’s home to everything from jellyfish to giant bluefin tuna. But the deep ocean is being invaded by tiny pieces of plastic — plastic that people thought was mostly floating at the surface, and in amounts they never imagined… Read Full Article; NPR (06-06-2019) Americans Consume Tens of Thousands of Microplastic Particles Every Year; Yale E360 (06-05-2019) Americans consume more than 70,000 microplastic particles every year from the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Scientists warn that while the health impacts of ingesting these tiny particles are largely unknown, there is potential for the plastic to enter human tissues and cause an immune response, as well as release toxic chemicals into the body… Americans Eat and Inhale Over 70,000 Plastic Particles Each Year According to a New Analysis; Time (06-06-2019) People may be breathing in microplastics, health expert warns; Guardian UK (05-10-2016) People could be breathing in microparticles of plastic, according to a leading environmental health expert, with as yet unknown consequences on health… Sea salt around the world is contaminated by plastic, studies show; Guardian UK (09-08-2017) New studies find microplastics in salt from the US, Europe and China, adding to evidence that plastic pollution is pervasive in the environment… 90 Percent of Seabirds Have Plastic in Their Stomachs, Newsweek (09-01-2015) By 2050, nearly all seabirds will have plastic in their stomachs. Already, 9 out of 10 of the birds have some of the substance in their digestive tracts. Such are the sobering conclusions of a study published August 31 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences… Great Barrier Reef Corals Eat Plastic; Science Daily (02-27-2015) Researchers in Australia have found that corals commonly found on the Great Barrier Reef will eat micro-plastic pollution. Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic in the environment and are a widespread contaminant in marine ecosystems, particularly in inshore coral reefs… Taste, not appearance, drives corals to eat plastics; Duke University (10-24-2017) New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions; United Nations (12-05-2016) Marine debris is negatively affecting more than 800 animal species and causing serious losses to many countries’ economies, according to a United Nations report launched December 5th, 2016… Whale and shark species at increasing risk from microplastic pollution – study; Guardian UK (02-05-2018) Whales, some sharks and other marine species such as rays are increasingly at risk from microplastics in the oceans, a new study published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, suggests… Video captures moment plastic enters food chain, BBC News (03-11-2017) A scientist has filmed the moment plastic microfibre is ingested by plankton, illustrating how the material is affecting life beneath the waves. The footage shows one way that plastic waste could be entering the marine and global food chain… Brain damage in fish from plastic nanoparticles in water, Science Daily (09-25-2017) A new study shows that plastic particles in water may end up inside fish brains. The plastic can cause brain damage, which is the likely cause of behavioral disorders observed in the fish… How microplastics, marine aggregates and marine animals are connected; Science Daily (10-23-2018) New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions; United Nations (12-05-2016) Marine debris is negatively affecting more than 800 animal species and causing serious losses to many countries’ economies, according to a United Nations report launched December 5th, 2016… Piling up: Drowning in a sea of plastic; CBS News (08-05-2018) Piece by piece, an environmental threat is piling up, and we’re ALL to blame. Worse yet, even those of us trying to bring an end to the problem may not be doing as much good as we think… These 10 companies are flooding the planet with throwaway plastic; Greenpeace (10-09-2018) Nine months, six continents, 239 cleanup events, and more than 187,000 pieces of trash later, we now have the most comprehensive snapshot to date of how corporations are contributing to the global plastic pollution problem… Plastic Pollution / When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide, Coastal Care ©-2009. For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 300 million tons of plastics were produced in 2015, confirming and upward trend over the past years, according to a new report by the World Economics Forum, released at Davos in January 2016. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature… — © SAF — Coastal Care
