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Nearly Every Seabird May Be Eating Plastic By 2050
sciencehabit writes: According to a new study almost every ocean-foraging species of birds may be eating plastic by 2050. In the five large ocean areas known as "garbage patches," each square kilometer of surface water holds almost 600,000 pieces of debris. Sciencemag reports: "By 2050, about 99.8% of the species studied will have eaten plastic, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Consuming plastic can cause myriad problems, Wilcox says. For example, some types of plastics absorb and concentrate environmental pollutants, he notes. After ingestion, those chemicals can be released into the birds’ digestive tracts, along with chemicals in the plastics that keep them soft and pliable. But plastic bits aren’t always pliable enough to get through a gull’s gut. Most birds have trouble passing large bits of plastic, and they build up in the stomach, sometimes taking up so much room that the birds can’t consume enough food to stay healthy."
Most birds have trouble passing large bits of plastic, and they build up in the stomach, sometimes taking up so much room that the birds canâ(TM)t consume enough food to stay healthy.
We can start harvesting bird carcasses for plastic, taking it out of the environment, and acting as a source of plastic. Win-win. /sarcasm (that shouldn't be needed here... but...)
Instead of being concerned about the REAL environmental issues.... such as plastics and pollution of our bodies of water, hazardous chemical releases by our own government's negligence, and corruption of potable water supplies.
With all the industrial food wrapped into plastic containers, human also eat plastic, since almost all plastic leak chemical into the food.
Polyethylene and polypropylene may be the exceptions, but they always come with other chemicals that improve color or plasticity.
I thought every bird was already eating plastic. Silly me.
It's not even funny how grotesque this is.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Just came across this picture yesterday, better than the one in the article:
http://www.afternoongossip.com/its-time-to-be-worried/14/
considering the quantity, there has to be somebody dumping garbage on a massive scale somewhere. I checked the Wikipedia article and it doesn't mention anything about the source. Considering the high cost of land in asia a doubt if landfills are good option. there has to be large scale dumping going on somewhere of post-consumer garbage.
FWIW, my understanding that about 80% of the plastics come from land based sources. Much of the plastic is post-consumer waste from urban runoff: sourced from beach litter, rivers and storm drains near large cities. Another large source is garbage transport lossage (e.g., things that fall off barges and trucks on their way to landfills or recycling centers). The biggest industrial source is plastics manufacturers that spill plastic pellets (which generally gets swept up in urban runoff).
In southern California alone, the EPA estimated that 4.5 million pounds per year is produced by post-consumer urban runoff.
There are of course people who dump garbage directly into the water like fishing boats, and commercial ships, and there are always a few lost shipping containers, but apparently they account for less than 20% of the pacific garbage patch.
Landfills are very common in asia. But of course there are problems. The number 1 problem is the waste transportation infrastructure is weak and has minimal regulations. Also, the landfills themselves don't have the best technology (the leach all sorts of toxins because of poor hydrology and other leachate issues, no methane management generating greenhouse gasses, uncontrolled tipping reducing the density, etc). A large amount of garbage in the pacific is attributable to the waste transportation problem, and I'm sure a few barge operator might ditch a load or two, but given the scale of their operations, they aren't just dumping everything in the river (which they would eventually have to dredge to continue their operations if they did that).
So to answer your question, apparently people in coastal cities litter on a massive scale which is due to urban runoff is apparently contributing much of the garbage patch. Depending on estimates it could be as much as 50%...
A Diet To Die For
One bird feasts on food that would leave most other animals stone dead
Nov 29th 2014
The Economist
Among an average of 528 types of bacterium found on the heads of 50 turkey and black vultures were those that can cause botulism, gangrene, tetanus, septicaemia, blood clots and metastatic abscesses in other animals. And although these birds did not have it, another study found Bacillus anthracis in vulture faeces. It causes anthrax, except in vultures.
Vultures clearly have strong stomachs, in every sense. With an acidity at least ten times that of a human’s, a vulture’s gut destroys a large amount of any potentially pathogenic bacteria that is ingested. Indeed, when the researchers analysed the contents of each bird’s large intestine, they could not detect some 85% of the micro-organisms they had found on its facial skin.
But what remains is hardly benign. The microbial flora in a vulture’s large intestine is dominated by two types of anaerobic faecal bacteria, Clostridia and Fusobacteria, both of which can be deadly to other animals. Some Clostridia species have been responsible for periodic mass die-offs in birds such as ducks, geese and waders (although other species can be beneficial), while Fusobacteria nucleatum is associated with human colon cancer.
-- The Economist, November 29th, 2014
[Just because seagulls and vultures can do it, doesn't mean terns and albatrosses can]
Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here
Stanford Report
June 19, 2015
That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said.
-- Stanford Report, June 19, 2015
I, however, am convinced you're a total fucking idiot.
Seabirds May Be Eating Steak by 2020
Seabirds May Be Living on the Moon by 2020
Seabird May Become the Dominant Species on the Planet by 2020
By 2050, nearly all articles posted on "news" sites will be hyped-up predictions of the distant future.
I think deforestation is mostly due to countries trying to increase the amount of arable land they possess, not related to old growth nightstands and dressers. Considering that this action is taken to try and feed starving people, you're going to be hard pressed to get them to stop it.
It's actually pretty funny.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
By 2050, about 99.8% of the species studied will have eaten plastic
This sounds a lot like the "one in three women around the world will get raped in their lifetime" bullshit figure that has been repeated ad nauseam over the last 10 years by people who couldn't calc.exe their way out of a paper bag.
lucm, indeed.
Require that the specific gravity of every form of plastic be greater than 1. End of problem.
In most poor countries, deforestation is also occurring because the people there still use wood / charcoal to cook and heat with. Those areas of the world don't have an electric grid like the US / Europe and depend upon this wood for survival.
So because gulls are doing well living out of garbage, there's nothing to worry about.
You're out of your mind.
You are right, of course. What amazes me is the fact that there are people in this forum who have modded your comment 'Funny'. Personally, I can't see anything funny in knowing that we as a society, because of our almost complete lack of concern for what crap we are spilling in the environment, cause millions of birds to die a slow, agonizing death. I challenge anybody - especially the idiots who think it is funny - to eat a couple of broken plastic spoons every day and tell me they enjoy the process of dying from pierced intestines.
Apart from whether one should feel a normal level of empathy towards wildlife or not, it is actually a significant issue. It is scientifically well established that different parts of the environment are closely connected - we talk about food webs, for one thing. We know that taking out just one, significant part of the food web can have a dramatic effect on everything, sometimes in surprising ways; a common theme, though, is that when it happens, it introduces instability, and when it finally settles down again, it is a much lower levels than before and with much lower species diversity.
Yet, we keep playing with these things, refusing to open our eyes and ears, like there was no tomorrow; I just hope we don't turn out to be right in that respect.