"WE INGEST ABOUT A CREDIT CARD'S WORTH OF PLASTIC EVERY WEEK."
Plasticosis” is the name a group of scientists have given to the damage caused by ingestion of plastics. The research these scientists carried out is based on seabirds, but has clear implications for other animals, including us.
It has been estimated that humans may now be consuming as much as a credit card’s worth of plastic every week, with negative implications that are now starting to become worryingly clear.
The international team, with scientists from the UK and Australia, studied the effects of plastic consumption on flesh-footed shearwater fledglings and show that it causes severe scarring of the birds’ stomachs, interfering with digestion, which can lead to stunted growth and, in some cases, death. Other inorganic materials that were also consumed by the birds, such as pumice, caused no such scarring, highlighting the “unique pathological properties of plastics”.
While the scale of plastic pollution has been a matter of concern for some time now, there is growing concern about the effects of microplastics in particular. These are tiny pieces of plastic, including pieces invisible to the naked eye, that are produced either deliberately or inadvertently as larger pieces of plastic are broken down due to environmental exposure. Scarcely a week passes without a new microplastic study revealing the extent our environment, including the air we breathe and our homes, is contaminated with plastic, and the worrying effects exposure to this contamination is having on living creatures.
Microplastics, as vectors for harmful endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, BPA and phthalates, are also directly implicated in the global collapse of human fertility we have been witnessing in recent decades. Sperm counts, sperm quality and testosterone levels are all declining precipitously, at the same time as a variety of birth defects, such as genital shrinkage and malformation, are on the rise.
This crisis of fertility was one of the principal subjects of the recent Tucker Carlson documentary The End of Men, which focused on the dire social and political knock-on effects of these widespread biological changes. As much as left-liberals may welcome and even encourage the biological changes that are taking place – Avatar director James Cameron recently described testosterone as a “toxin that you have to slowly work out of your system” – the truth is that, if left uncorrected, they will surely spell disaster for our civilisation and the world.
PLASTICOSIS – WHAT IT IS.
Plasticosis, as identified by the researchers, is a type of fibrotic disease. Fibrosis is caused by excessive scarring in an area, as a result of repeated inflammation which prevents proper wound-healing.
After an injury, scar tissue forms to help in healing. If, however, an area is inflamed repeatedly, more and more scar tissue can form, which reduces the flexibility of the tissue affected, causing changes to its structure that may have serious negative effects.
The researchers had previously looked at the effects of microplastics on animal tissues, and found them in organs such as the spleen and kidneys, where they were found to be associated with the symptoms described in the previous paragraph. The team already knew that the flesh-footed shearwaters which live on Lord Howe Island, some 600km off the coast of Australia, were suffering from acute plastic contamination, and decided to consider them further.
The effects of plasticosis on the birds are extremely unpleasant. As levels of scar tissue in the proventriculus increase, the tissue becomes more and more swollen, eventually starting to break down.
“The tubular glands, which secrete digestive compounds, are perhaps the best example of the impact of plasticosis,” explains study co-author Dr Alex Bond.
“When plastic is consumed, these glands get gradually more stunted until they eventually lose their tissue structure entirely at the highest levels of exposure.”
If the birds lose these important glands, they become more susceptible to infection and also lose the ability to absorb and digest key nutrients. In extreme cases, particularly with young chicks, they can starve to death as their stomachs fill with plastic.
The researchers found that growth was directly linked to levels of plastic in the birds’ bodies. The length of the wing was associated with the amount of plastics the bird had consumed, as was the bird’s overall weight.
It was also clear that it was consumption of plastic, and not other inorganic items, such as pumice stones, that was causing the damage. Pumice itself did not cause scarring. It did, however, help to break plastic down into smaller pieces in the birds’ stomachs, leading to further damage.
THE PLASTIC CRISIS.
By providing evidence that consumption of plastic is associated with a clearly identifiable pathology, and by giving those negative symptoms a specific name, the researchers behind this latest study will provide further impetus to consider plastic pollution a specific threat to life on earth. This is only to be welcomed.
The scale of the plastic threat is truly mind-boggling. Over the last 70 years, just nine percent of the 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic produced has been recycled. The remaining 91 percent has either been incinerated or made its way into the environment, where weathering and aging will break it down into smaller pieces, and eventually into microplastics.
Almost everywhere we care to look, we now find plastic. It circulates on the wind and water like a force of nature. A recent study of the coastal city of Auckland, in New Zealand, for instance, suggests that 74 metric tonnes of microplastic fall on the city each year. That’s the equivalent of three million plastic bottles, raining down. We find microplastics in world’s most remote places, at the bottom of the oceans, in Antarctic snow and on mountain-tops. Around 3,000 tons of microplastics are estimated to fall in snow over Switzerland annually.
Plastic is in our drinking water, our food, and in our homes. At home, we may be inhaling microplastics at levels hundreds of times higher than previously predicted. The young are at particular risk of exposure, as they chew plastic toys and crawl around in carpets made of synthetic fibres that trap dust and microplastic particles. Through analysis of stool samples, babies and infants have been found to have up to 15 times more microplastics in their bodies than adults.
While this new research focuses only on the stomachs of seabirds, there are clear indications that plasticosis is unlikely to be limited to the digestive tissues of birds. Instead, it’s probable that fibrosis will be the response of many other tissues, in many other creatures, to repeated inflammation by plastic particles. Microplastics have been found deep in human lung, liver, kidney and spleen tissue – even in the placentas of pregnant women – and they’re also known to cross the blood-brain barrier.
If its ubiquity is the defining feature of plastic pollution today, there are still things you can do to mitigate your exposure, even if you can’t eliminate it totally. Reduce your reliance on plastics in every aspect of your life, including bottles, Tupperware and clothing; filter your water; ditch processed food and buy locally produced organic food whenever possible, or even start to produce some yourself – doing any or all of these things will absolutely help to reduce the levels of harmful plastic you ingest.
In the long term, though, only a determined political movement can deal with the global scale of the problem. While individual entrepreneurs such as Boyan Slat, whose Ocean Cleanup company has been tasked with removing the enormous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, are trying to take the matter in hand with new technologies, their admirable work cannot address the underlying fact of our modern thralldom to plastic. Yes, we need innovation – to clean our air, water and soils of the plastic that is already there – but there are also sensitive issues around plastic use and disposal that can only be addressed from the top, with political pressure. What good, for instance, are bans on plastic straws in the West when 90 percent of the plastic that ends up in the world’s seas comes from 10 rivers, eight in Asia and two in Africa?
About as good as a paper straw, actually.
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