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73 Percent of Fish In the Northwestern Atlantic Have Microplastics In Their Guts
According to a new study published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, microplastics have been found in the stomachs of nearly three out of every four mesopelagic fish caught in the Northwest Atlantic. "These findings are worrying, as the affected fish could spread microplastics throughout the ocean," reports Phys.Org. "The fish are also prey for fish eaten by humans, meaning that microplastics could indirectly contaminate our food supply through the transfer of associated microplastic toxins." From the report: Microplastics are small plastic fragments that have accumulated in the marine environment following decades of pollution. These fragments can cause significant issues for marine organisms that ingest them, including inflammation, reduced feeding and weight-loss. Microplastic contamination may also spread from organism to organism when prey is eaten by predators. Since the fragments can bind to chemical pollutants, these associated toxins could accumulate in predator species. Mesopelagic fish serve as a food source for a large variety of marine animals, including tuna, swordfish, dolphins, seals and sea birds. Typically living at depths of 200-1,000 meters, these fish swim to the surface at night to feed then return to deeper waters during the day.
The researchers caught mesopelagic fish at varying depths, then examined their stomachs for microplastics back in the lab. They used a specialized air filter so as not to introduce airborne plastic fibers from the lab environment. The team found a wide array of microplastics in the fish stomachs -- with a whopping 73% of the fish having ingested the pollutants.
The researchers caught mesopelagic fish at varying depths, then examined their stomachs for microplastics back in the lab. They used a specialized air filter so as not to introduce airborne plastic fibers from the lab environment. The team found a wide array of microplastics in the fish stomachs -- with a whopping 73% of the fish having ingested the pollutants.
Well, I mean, plastic usually contains Bisphenol A for starters - which is a known endocrine disruptor, amongst other things. There are also a myriad of other similar chemicals in plastics which have different health effects.
Your statement reveals that you don't understand it all.
Let me explain it to you - micro-particles of non-digestible or difficult-to-digest stuff gives intestines more to deal with than they should otherwise.
This means they have to work harder, or work less efficiently, or the good work is overpowered by the "dealing-with-shit" stuff. This means that the organism they support doesn't reach its full potential.
TL:DR version: non-digestible input means your guts work less better. Get it?
If that's too difficult for you to cope with, then try supplementing your diet with 20% decomposed plastic bags and get back to us.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
They examined the stomach contents of fish. Okay.
They found "microplastics" in about three out of four fish. Okay.
How much? It couldn't be a lot, because they were worried about contaminating the samples with microplastics from the air itself.
That means that the amounts they were looking for were literally microscopic, and very, very low in volume.
It's more a testament to the ability to find incredibly small amounts of the stuff than any indication that the amount they found was large.
This is a lot like the "we found Fukushima radiation in the ocean off the US coast" story - where the amount of cesium was unimaginably small - three ATOMS of the stuff per cubic meter...
And North Korea is actually called Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Doesn't make it so.
Scientific method or faith. Those are your options. If the plastic is harmful surely there are tons of scientific tests and journals detailing the harm?
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Did you read the summary? Not only do the plastics bind to chemical pollutants, the stomachs or the fish get full of plastic leading to reduced feeding. Both those things will lead to lower lifespans and likely, reduced reproduction rates. When you consider bio accumulation as you work up the food chain, it just makes life even harder for animals like tuna and dolphins.
Over long time scales, this will work itself out, but who knows how long that will take and how species will be impacted by the time they evolve around this.
TL; DR - Prove that statement? How about you first prove that Greed N. Corruption won't distort the truth. The "science" is far too often bought and sold these days in order to protect profits.
Sometimes, it's merely self-righteousness and stupidity. During the American Prohibition period, a plasticizer was added to Jamaican ginger (Jake) to foil inspectors testing for ginger solids meant to make the alcohol unpalatable.
A pair of amateur chemists and bootleggers, Harry Gross and Max Reisman, worked to develop an alternative adulterant that would pass the tests, but still be somewhat palatable. They sought advice from a professor at MIT who did not realize it was meant for internal consumption. They settled on a plasticizer, tri-o-tolyl phosphate (also known as tri-ortho cresyl phosphate, TOCP, or Tricresyl phosphate), that was able to pass the Treasury Department's tests but preserved Jake's drinkability. TOCP was originally thought to be non-toxic; however, it was later determined to be a neurotoxin that causes axonal damage to the nerve cells in the nervous system of human beings, especially those located in the spinal cord. The resulting type of paralysis is now referred to as organophosphate-induced delayed neuropathy, or OPIDN.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
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Do these microplastics affect the fish's health and / or significantly impact their lifespan? If not then is there some other reason to be concerned?
Well, the problem is with science itself. Or rather with the way science is covered in the media. The media wants answers, but the first step in science is finding good questions. You can't answer a question like that until you know the phenomenon exists, but people want to jump straight to what it means.
If there were one thing I wish the educational system instilled in people, it would be the capacity of being concerned without necessarily being alarmed. People come out with basically two easy options to fall back on: alarmism and denialism.
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LDPE is like a sponge and it absorbs lots of other crap as it floats around for years in the ocean. Crap that you don't want in a fish's belly, but even uncontaminated PE can be problematic for a fish.
Saying PE is basically harmless is an over simplification and really only applies to normal uses of the material. There are exceptional cases where it can cause harm. It's the business of researchers to look at exceptional cases and see how our assumptions match up to reality.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
depends on which species your talking about doesn't it?
Here's cod
https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/p...
and you're really gonna sit there and tell me that bluefin tuna catches are the same size since 1980. now that's some bullshit.
fishing is anything but a healthy trade, it's freaking dangerous and overfishing is a well-documented problem.
Absolute statements are never true