By Sara Novak / Source: Ecosalon

plastic

It’s a problem that’s somewhat hidden because plastic is a huge industry that keeps pushing more and more plastic products in our faces. But the fact of the matter is plastic pollution is a real problem–a recent study revealed its full magnitude.

In all, 5 trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing 269,000 tons are floating in the world’s oceans, causing pollution beyond our wildest nightmares, according to The Guardian. Just to give you an idea, a blue whale (the most massive species on Earth) weighs 100-150 tons–so that’s 2,150 blue whales! Data collected by scientists from the U.S., France, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand found that most of the waste is in the form of “micro-plastics”, the kind that get ingested and make their way up the food chain and into our bodies. That’s a scary thing when you consider chemicals like phthalates and BPA that have already been found to be dangerous. And then there’s the larger pieces that end up straggling far too many marine creatures and birds.

“We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines,” Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western Australia said to The Guardian. “But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants. Bigger fish eat the little fish and then they end up on our plates. It’s hard to tell how much pollution is being ingested but certainly plastics are providing some of it.”

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