You are ingesting plastic everyday.
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Much of the planet is swimming in discarded plastic. The reason is: plastic is a wonderful material. Plastic offers many conveniences.
It is light in weight, chemically stable, easily moulded into different shapes and sizes, has good insulation, and low thermal conductivity. Last but not the least, it has low processing cost.
These conveniences of plastic, however, have led to a throw-away culture that reveals the material’s dark side: today, single-use plastics account for 40 percent of the plastic produced every year. e.g. plastic bags and food wrappers, have a lifespan of mere minutes to hours, yet they may persist in the environment for hundreds of years.
This throw-away culture has polluted our air, our soil, and our waters (rivers and oceans). More than eight million tonnes of plastic enters the world's oceans each year and most of that escapes from land. Microplastics are spread throughout the water column and have been found in every corner of the globe, from Mount Everest, the highest peak, to the Mariana Trench, the deepest trough. Experts think that by 2050, the amount of plastic in the ocean will weigh more than the amount of fish in the ocean.
The fact is, we are now breathing plastic, eating plastic, and drinking plastic. One study published in 2018 in the journal Environmental Pollution concluded that people were more likely to ingest plastic through the dust in their environment than by eating shellfish. Researchers at a university in Italy discovered tiny plastic particles in things like lettuce, broccoli, potatoes, and pears. The study, published in the Environmental Research journal, discovered that apples and carrots were found to have the highest levels of plastic particles in them.
The Medical University of Vienna has recently published a study in the journal Exposure & Health which suggests that on average, five grams of plastic particles enter the human gastrointestinal tract per person, per week.
They can also enter the body when we drink from plastic bottles, with people who drink 1.5 to 2 litres of water a day from these bottles taking in 90,000 plastic particles per year.
"However, those who choose tap water can, depending on their geographical location, reduce the amount ingested to 40,000 plastic particles," reads the Medical University of Vienna's study. Drinking filtered tap water, as it almost halves the ingested particles compared to bottled water.
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