All tagged Plastic

Drowning in Plastic

I assume that most Swarthmorean readers are familiar with the problems caused by plastic pollution: the great Pacific garbage patch that is twice the size of Texas and growing; eight million tons of plastic being dumped into the ocean each year; Kamila Beach on the Big Island in Hawaii being abandoned by swimmers as volunteers pick up 15,000 pieces of trash on a weekend, 90% of it plastic. But I suspect few are aware that we ingest between 10,000 and 50,000 pieces of microplastic annually, some from the fish that we eat and some that we inhale, primarily from sources not yet fully identified. And that it accumulates in our bodies, with its bisphenols and other nasty chemicals.