In the Mariana Trench, the lowest point in any ocean, every tiny animal tested had plastic pollution hiding in its gut.
Amphipods are an important part of the food chain and ecosystem. They are eating OUR microplastics 6.8 miles down, in turn, those microplastics are ending up in us through the seafood we eat.
Microplastics were found in human stools for the first time.
“more than 50% of the world population might have microplastics in their stools”
“The smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the bloodstream, the lymphatic system, and may even reach the liver,”
“Lauren Brooks eventually found plastic fibers and fragments in 72 percent of the amphipods that the team collected, from all six trenches that they had surveyed.”
Food is scarce in the deep, so amphipods can’t afford to be fussy. They’ll eat pretty much anything, which makes them particularly vulnerable to plastics.
Amphipods also contained PCBs!
The team found PCBs galore. Some amphipods were carrying levels 50 times higher than those seen in crabs from one of China’s most polluted rivers. When the news broke, Jamieson was inundated with calls from journalists and concerned citizens. And in every discussion, one question kept coming up: What about plastics?
“The world produces an estimated 10 tons of plastic a second, and between 5 million and 14 million tons sweep into the oceans every year.”
Some of that debris washes up on beaches, even on the world’s most isolated islands. About 5 trillion pieces currently float in surface waters, mostly in the form of tiny, easy-to-swallow fragments that have ended up in the gut of albatrosses, sea turtles, plankton, fish, and whales. But those pieces also sink, snowing into the deep sea and upon the amphipods that live there.
In the least polluted of these sites, half of the amphipods had swallowed at least one piece of plastic. In the 6.8-mile-deep Mariana Trench, the lowest point in any ocean, all of the specimens had plastic in their gut.
“It builds upon a growing body of evidence suggesting that the deep sea, by far the largest habitat on the planet, may very well be the largest reservoir of plastic waste on the planet,” says Anela Choyfrom the University of California at San Diego.
Other scientists have also found plastic litter in the deep; just last year, one team documented a plastic bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
And it’s worst:
Microplastics found in 90 percent of table salt, National Geographic
WHO launches health review after microplastics found in 90% of bottled water, The Guardian
Microplastics found in supermarket fish, shellfish, CBC
Beer, Drinking Water And Fish: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere, NPR
From sea to plate: how plastic got into our fish, The Guardian
