A Recent Study: All Seafood is Contaminated with Microplastics
Plastic was not made to be consumed by humans in their food, yet they have to consume it. Small remnants of these synthetic polymers have now leaked into the air, food and water, and avoiding them has become an almost impossible battle.
A study of five popular seafood purchased from a market in Australia revealed how ubiquitous these micro-pollutants are.
The study was published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal in July 2020, and was presented in a statement on the University of Exeter website on August 12.
The study began after the purchase of 5 blue crabs, 10 farmed tiger prawns, 10 wild squid, 10 farmed osyters and 10 wild sardines. The researchers found plastic traces in all samples without exception.
“Looking at an average serving, a seafood eater could be exposed to approximately 0.7 milligrams of plastic when consuming an average serving of oysters or squid,” explains Francesca Ribeiro, who studies dietary exposure to plastic at the University of Queensland, Australia.
When eating sardines, up to 30 mg of plastic is eaten. For comparison, 30 milligrams is the average weight of a grain of rice. We still don’t know what this does to our bodies, but we need to know.
The ocean is the ultimate sink for plastics in the world, and understanding how contaminated the marine food is with these contaminants is part of the challenge.
And after eating the plastic materials that we made ourselves, it was found that many marine species are fighting physical damage and oxidative stress, and some even died, like the shore whales that we found stuffed with litter, according to the study.
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