Microplastics Becoming A Big Problem Photo by Kate Ter Haar
A look at how microplastics are affecting human health, and the rising number of pollutants in our environment.
— Daden Dolajak, General Reporter
Microplastics have been an ongoing issue in our water and food for years. So what happens when you ingest food, and water with plastic in it? It gets in your organs. According to the Washington Post, it is confirmed that in a year the average American will consume on average 74,000 microplastic particles. Microplastics showed up in 100% of human organ samples in a scientific study. This is a rather new discovery so it is hard to say exactly how it can affect humans, but it is known that there are toxic chemicals in plastics. This has been affecting our environment and wildlife for decades, so it would be ignorant to believe they would not directly affect us as well. BPA is a chemical in plastics that can interfere with hormone activity. According to the FDA, BPA will have little effect on the overall health of most people. That does not mean that consuming plastic is safe; for some people it can cause metabolic disease, birth defects and other health problems. Microplastics are incredibly small; they are 1 to 100 micrometers in length at that size, some microplastics have the capability to enter your bloodstream and they can even enter cells. Other microplastics can be quite large, and can even bees seen with the naked eye. Microplastics are everywhere around us, and they have gotten into every crevice of our environment. It is in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink.
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Microplastics and pollution in general will become a vary serious issue that will need to be dealt with. So what can we do to stop the spread of microplastics? To start off, studies show that people who use plastic more frequently will obviously consume more microplastics, so we should cut down use of plastics. One can also support bans on waste dumps, plastic use and recycling. Reycling is a great way to cut down on wase in general, we should be helping our enviroment more now than ever.
October 2020
Photo sourced from creative commons
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