June 11, 2019: Fish Are Getting Stupider - Plastic Pollution

 

6/11/19: Do you worry about environmental issues? If you do the E.P.A. under President Trump no longer does. Not everything wrong is our current president’s fault; but you know he’s not paying attention to bad news. It turns out, because we are producing so much plastic, and recycling almost none, that “microplastics” are showing up in our food and water, in our soil and in the air we breathe.

 

____________________ 

Smaller, slower, and stupider fish!

____________________

 

Most Americans have probably heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where ocean currents have trapped 80,000 metric tons of mostly plastic trash in a giant, floating field twice the size of Texas. 

  

Now, it turns out, the average American is inhaling or swallowing 74,000 to 121,000 “microplastics” annually. 

Microplastics get into food and air in several ways. Many start off as part of larger plastic objects, which over time fragment into smaller and smaller pieces until they become tiny: 5 millimeters or less in diameter, or as small as a sesame seed. People can’t see most of the plastics they consume. These are ingested by animals (who then become our food), and they float through the air until people inhale them. They also settle on the food that people eat.

 

Bottled water is a “great” source of clean water, if you’d like a nice dose of microplastics, which you can wash down with another bottle. 

Researchers “did a separate analysis; when people drink their water only from bottled sources, they ingest about 90,000 microplastic particles every year from that water [emphasis added], but people who drink only tap water get 4,000 such particles a year.” Kieren Cox, the author of the study calls the 22-fold increase in plastic consumption a “lifestyle choice,” and suggests, maybe, tap water isn’t such a terrible idea.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Scientists eventually warn that by 2050 there will be more plastic, by weight, in the world’s oceans, than fish. China is responsible for an estimated 30% of the plastic garbage. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be twice the size of Texas. But a second patch in the North Atlantic is nearly as bad. 

As the staff at The Week writes, 

Researchers find that fish raised in waters with heavy concentrations of microplastics are “smaller, slower, and more stupid” than normal fish. For some sea creatures, the impact is more obvious and immediate: In June, after a struggling whale died in a Thai canal, its stomach was found to contain 17 pounds of plastic, including 80 shopping bags, which had prevented the whale from digesting food. Fish, mammals, and birds dead from a similar cause are washing up on beaches around the world.

 

It might be nice to cut back on all the plastic water bottles, all the plastic bags, and all the plastic straws. 

But, hey, stupider fish! (See: 9/8/20 for a Trumpian take on plastic straws. You are right if you are guessing it will be stupid.)