I found something SHOCKING looking at samples from my local pond

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Everywhere scientists have looked, they have found microplastic particles: from the deep sea, to the Arctic snow and Antarctic ice, drinking water, beer, table salt (I found some in the sugar I used for last Sunday’s video) and even in rain falling over us!

Anything made of plastic sheds micro fibers in the environment: clothes, plastic bottles, tupperwares, fruit and vegetable packaging, plastic tea bags, etc. We actually might be ingesting up to 100 000 microplastic particles a day and it will only get worse if we continue to use this material as we are right now 😳 Around 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year on our planet and it should reach at least 800 million tonnes by 2050. At this moment, there are 5 billion tonnes of plastic in landfills, oceans and in our immediat environment. It’s no big surprise that micro plastics have even been found in human blood..

There are lots of studies ongoing about plastic toxicity at the moment and there are several theories on how microplastics can negatively affect our health. Plastic is often treated with chemicals that can interfere with our endocrine (hormonal) systems, some could be small enough to enter our cells and tissues and induce damages, small animals can also feed on it and die from starvation.

It has been reported in a 2017 study that zooplankton exposed to plastic micro fibres have 50% less babies and those who reach the adult stage are way smaller than usual. It also have been shown that microplastics highly interfere with swimming and cause some deformations of these organisms 🥺

Track from @NOCThrasher

Videos taken with my iPhone mounted on a BA310E Motic microscope with an @ilabcam ultra adapter 🔬

References:
Cain, M., Bowman, W. and Hacker. (2014). Ecology. 3rd edition. 361-362.

Leslie, H. A., Van Velzen, M. J., Brandsma, S. H., Vethaak, A. D., Garcia-Vallejo, J. J., & Lamoree, M. H. (2022). Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood. Environment international, 163, 107199.

Lim, X. (2021). Microplastics are everywhere – but are they harmful?. Nature, 593