Did you know you are eating plastic every day?
Microplastic particles from broken-down plastic pollution and synthetic materials and ingredients have become so widespread that humans are breathing, drinking and eating them on a daily basis.
A US study has found billions of tonnes of plastic, called microplastics, are travelling around the world through the earth's atmosphere, oceans, waterways, plants and wildlife.
These near-invisible, dust-like pieces of microplastics manufactured using different toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, leach hazardous toxins compromising immune function, growth, reproduction and impacting whole ecosystems.
Microplastics are plastics that have degraded into smaller and smaller pieces from sources such as large plastic debris like disposable water bottles, tiny plastic fibres from nylon clothes and synthetic textiles and tiny plastic beads sometimes found in health and beauty products.
Most of us wear synthetic material (or plastic) like polyester and nylon every day with dresses, shirts, yoga pants, fleeces, and even underwear. Microplastics can be found in exfoliating face masks, body scrubs and glittery make-up. These different forms of microplastic are produced entirely from chemicals, releasing tiny plastic bits into waste waters that flow down our drains, through water treatment plants and out into our rivers, lakes and oceans...by the billions.
When you discard plastic packaging in to the environment, wear or wash synthetic clothes or use beauty products with microbeads, tiny particles break off and enter the atmosphere or our ocean - we ingest them by either breathing them in or consuming them through the food we eat and drink.
A study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology believes it's possible humans may be consuming anywhere between 39,000 to 52,000 microplastic particles a year. The research also reviewed the amount of microplastics in the air and in the water we drink. It estimates, that combined with the microplastics we inhale, the number is more than 74,000 a year. Additionally, people who drank their recommended water intake through tap water ingest a further 4,000 plastic particles annually while those who drink only bottled water ingest an additional 90,000. The author of the report, Kieran Cox, expects the research underestimates the actual levels, and it's likely people are consuming far more.
Scientists are concerned about the ecological impacts the vast quantities of plastic in the environment are having on plants, animals and humans. Researchers at Cornell University have said plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental issues of the 21st century.