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We're now increasingly aware of the microplastic fragments polluting our oceans, but a new study shows just how quickly these tiny particles can find their way into marine life – it takes a mere six hours for billions of pieces of material to spread inside aquatic animals.

The unfortunate critters involved in the research were great scallops (Pecten maximus), and scientists used several of them in specially prepared water designed to match the world's oceans in terms of plastic content.

After six hours, billions of 250-nanometre particles had seeped into the intestines of the scallops, the study showed. An even higher number of 20-nanometre particles had found their way into the rest of the mollusc's body, including around the kidneys, gills, muscles and other organs.

There is one small silver lining – when the great scallops were put back into clean water, most plastic traces disappeared in days, with some sticking around for a couple of months – but it's not much consolation when it comes to the overall picture of pollution.

"The results of the study show for the first time that nanoparticles can be rapidly taken up by a marine organism, and that in just a few hours they become distributed across most of the major organs," says lead researcher Maya Al Sid Cheikh, from the University of Plymouth in the UK.