Trash
talk: 269,000 tons of plastic litter choke world's oceans
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[December 11, 2014]
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are plastic
shopping bags, bottles, toys, action figures, bottle caps, pacifiers,
tooth brushes, boots, buckets, deodorant roller balls, umbrella handles,
fishing gear, toilet seats and so much more. Plastic pollution is
pervasive in Earth's oceans.
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Researchers unveiled on Wednesday what they called the most
scientifically rigorous estimate to date of the amount of plastic
litter in the oceans - about 269,000 tons - based on data from 24
ship expeditions around the globe over six years.
"There's much more plastic pollution out there than recent estimates
suggest," said Marcus Eriksen, research director for the Los
Angeles-based 5 Gyres Institute, which studies this kind of
pollution.
"It's everything you can imagine made of plastic," added Eriksen,
who led the study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
"It's like Walmart or Target set afloat."
Ninety-two percent of the plastic comes in the form of
"microplastic" - particles from larger items made brittle by
sunlight and pounded to pieces by waves, bitten by sharks and other
fish or otherwise torn apart, Eriksen said.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Dec/11/images/ads/current/gives_you_more_bch_040314.png) Experts have sounded the alarm in recent years over how plastic
pollution is killing huge numbers of seabirds, marine mammals and
other creatures while sullying ocean ecosystems.
Some plastic objects like discarded fishing nets kill by entangling
dolphins, sea turtles and other animals. Plastic fragments also
lodge in the throats and digestive tracts of marine animals.
The researchers said plastic litter enters the oceans from rivers
and heavily populated coastal regions as well as from vessels
navigating shipping lanes.
Larger plastic objects, abundant near coastlines, often float into
the world's five subtropical gyres - big regions of spinning
currents in the North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic
and Indian Ocean.
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In the middle of these gyres, plastic trash has accumulated into
huge "garbage patches" that act as "giant blenders - shredders that
eviscerate plastic from large pieces to microplastics," Eriksen
said.
The study, based on data from expeditions to all five subtropical
gyres, coastal Australia, the Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean
Sea, estimated that there are 5.25 trillion particles of plastic
litter. Tiny plastic particles, down to the size of a sand grain,
have fanned out through the oceans and reach even remote polar
regions.
The researchers said the particles readily absorb chemical
pollutants like PCBs, DDT and others, and these toxins enter marine
food webs when ingested by fish and other sea creatures.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)
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