What goes in fish, ends up in us
Of all the negative effects I've written about, plastic in the ocean have even more consequences than on the environment and marine life. It is now being investigated whether it has an impact on us humans or not, through consumption of seafood.
In a previous post I wrote about why fish eat the plastics, and even if plastic is non biodegredable, the sunlight, wind,waves and heat can still break down the plastic into little pieces called microplastics. To marine life, this looks a lot like food, such as algae and plankton, and it ends up in their bodies.
When knowing this, maybe people will start caring more about what ends up in the ocean.......
In this article by National Geographic, scientists describe how they have found microplastics in 114 species, where about half of them are fish us humans eat. Does this have an impact on our bodies?
It is not proven yet, but this scientific articles describes the many subjects plastic can be made of, and how that can have a toxic effect if being consumed too much.
Linked is also another article if you're not interested in the scientific explanations, but more the journalistic way. We're all different.....
Again for the more visual learners, or just for everybody, this video is a really cool 3-D animation regarding microplastics, and other important topics.
I know some of you are thinking that everything causes diseases and cancer now a days, and I feel the same way. Yet, fish is one of the foods that has always been considered the most healthy, comparing to other food such as red meat and carbs for example. We do not want to make this bad as well! Not only for our own risk of health, but also for the animals living in our man made dump we have as a ocean now.
There is so much information out there regarding this issue because the problem is fairly new. If you don't believe me, just Google "fish eat plastic", and every major news paper has an article about it.
Maybe some of it is hyped up, since the facts regarding if it's dangerous or not for us humans, but my personal opinion without being a scientist is that it is dangerous for us. Plastic is not food. Animals die from eating it, and too much consumption of plastic is obviously dangerous for the human body as well. Whoever believes this is not a problem, can eat a bowl of plastic beads and see how he/She feels after that.
Fish baby with microplastic in it |
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