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 These examples may sound extreme, but can easily represent over time
the cumulative amount of microscopic pieces of plastic we consume
every day.
People could be ingesting the equivalent of a credit card of plastic
a week, a 2019 study by WWF International concluded, mainly in
plastic-infused drinking water but also via food like shellfish,
which tends to be eaten whole so the plastic in their digestive
systems is also consumed.
Reuters used the findings of the study to illustrate what this
amount of plastic actually looks like over various periods of time.
(Open
https://reut.rs/3qsC89K in an external browser to see a
visualisation of the amount of microplastic we consume.)
In a month, we ingest the weight of a 4x2 Lego brick in plastic, and
in a year, the amount of plastic in a fireman's helmet.
This may not sound like much, but it can add up. At this rate of
consumption, in a decade, we could be eating 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) in
plastic, the equivalent of over two sizable pieces of plastic pipe.
And over a lifetime, we consume about 20 kg (44 lb) of microplastic.
Plastic production has surged in the last 50 years with the
widespread use of inexpensive disposable products. As plastic is not
biodegradable, but only breaks down into smaller pieces, it
ultimately ends up everywhere, cluttering beaches and choking marine
wildlife, as well as in the food chain.
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Standing on the shoreline of a wildlife-protected saltmarsh in southern England,
Malcolm Hudson, a professor of environmental science at the University of
Southampton, shows Reuters small, bead-like plastic pellets that permeate the
marsh.
Hudson says that most research has been done on these microplastics, but there
are increasing amounts of even smaller particles called nanoplastics in the
environment that are far more difficult to detect, which we are likely ingesting
as well.
"It could pass into our blood or lymphatic system and end up in our organs,"
said Hudson.
"Those plastic particles are little time bombs waiting to break down small
enough to be absorbed by wildlife or by people and then potentially have harmful
consequences."
(Reporting by Kim Kyung Hoon and Matthew Stock; Writing by Karishma Singh;
Editing by Michael Perry)
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