Microplastic is everywhere. You’re drinking it.This is a sample of beach sand mixed with sand-grain

Microplastic is everywhere. You’re drinking it.This is a sample of beach sand mixed with sand-grain sized plastic. Plastic grains that are this small and smaller (<5 mm in diameter) are termed microplastics, and they’re one product humans have spread across the globe; a 2014 study estimated that there are more than 5 trillion microplastic particles in the ocean. Some microplastics are manufactured directly; you may have seen them at one point in body wash or other personal care items. They can also be created by larger chunks of plastic that are broken down into fine bits by exposure to the sun. Organisms can sweep up these grains as they are feeding and accumulate in them, threatening their health. Pollutants can also react with their surfaces, and those pollutants can be concentrated and transferred up the food chain.A couple of recent studies just came out looking at the behavior of microplastics. First, a group of researchers studied plastic concentrations in riverbeds throughout the United Kingdom. They identified the river with the greatest concentration of them in the country – the Mersey River that runs through Manchester and Liverpool, and found that at present the concentration of microplastics in that river is higher than any other river known in the world.They also convincingly demonstrated that the grains are behaving like low-density sedimentary particles. Several of the rivers sampled in their study flooded during the winter of 2015-2016, and total concentrations of microplastics in the rivers dropped by 70% after the floods. The high water flow literally picked up the low-density plastics and flushed them out into the wider ocean. Most of them were much tinier than the plastics observed in this image; these sand grains are about a millimeter in diameter but the most abundant type is even smaller, about 1/5 of a millimeter in diameter. Much of the time you might not even see them if you looked directly at them, leading into our next study.Microplastics aren’t just a problem for marine organisms. Another study on microplastic debris was released just as I was working on this article, performed by scientists at SUNY-Fredonia in New York. These scientists found microplastic contamination in, well, bottled water. Other studies have found them in tap water, but the concentrations in the bottled water were about 2x as high. There are no current studies indicating long-term harm from human consumption, but at this point I don’t think anyone has studied whether or not there’s a dose where that is no longer true.So yeah, we’re careless enough about plastic pollution that we’re drinking it. Constantly. Ew.-JBBImage credit: OSUhttps://flic.kr/p/yqFQZJStudies referenced herehttp://go.nature.com/2HAizFnhttp://bbc.in/2peMH20Read more:http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43388870http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43363545 -- source link

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