Do We Really Care About Plastic Pollution ?

The pollution caused by the plastic (or " plastic pollution ") is a pollution caused by the accumulation of waste in plastic in the environment. There are many forms and types of plastic pollution.

This pollution can have harmful effects on the land and in streams by affecting wildlife, habitat and secondarily or by far, harmful to humans.

Polymers carry many damages to biodiversity: choking or starvation for the animals that have ingested them, pollution of the marine environment, proliferation of invasive species.

The billions of fragments of plastic waste that have accumulated, for hundreds of years, in the gyres in the centre of the oceans, carry many attacks on the marine fauna and flora. The most sadly emblematic example is that of turtles who choke on plastic bags they take for jellyfish.

"These are the species most sensitive to plastic waste," explains François Galgani, oceanographer and researcher specialising in waste at the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea. Studies have shown that a third of some species of turtles stranded had ingested plastics.

Mutilations and Suffocation of Animals by its effects on the sea

More generally, plastic pollution poses a threat to a large part of the marine fauna: the largest waste causes wounds, infections or mutilations to animals by "entanglement" effects, for example with nets or bags. Microfragments, reduced by salt, ultraviolet light, and water movement, were ingested by at least 267 species worldwide (86% of sea turtles, 44% of all 'birds, 43% marine mammals), according to a 2006 statistics report that compiled studies from European and American researchers.

With serious consequences like poisoning, intestinal obstruction, suffocation or drowning. The many plastic fragments ingested by animals leave them no room in the stomach to eat, and they die on an empty stomach, " said François Chartier, Greenpeace's "ocean" campaigner. In total, the NGO estimates that approximately one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from the ingestion of plastics.

Pollution of Land

Perhaps the most common form of contamination of plastic we can perceive is terrestrial pollution, and although we believe that it is something minimal that will sooner or later degrade in the environment, the truth is that plastic can take up to 1000 years to degrade, time in which it can cause multiple damages in the ecosystems.

Image source https://pixabay.com/en/garbage-bag-waste-850874/ Credit: cocoparisienne

Even if this plastic becomes channeled and deposited in the trash, landfills are not a definitive solution either; Currently the vast majority of massive garbage deposits do not have the capacity to generate total insulation, so they end up becoming a permanent source of toxins and leachates, which end up severely contaminating aquifers, and causing deterioration and erosion. difficult to counter.

Effects of plastic pollution in the air

Although you believe that plastics are heavy and do not pollute what you breathe, you must bear in mind that in fact it is also one of the main factors of environmental pollution, which is also one of the biggest health problems in the world.

And not only does the extensive plastic manufacturing system release a huge variety of toxins in the environment, but also an important proportion of the plastic worldwide (+ -12%) ends up being burned or incinerated, generating a huge contamination of the air, thus also releasing some of the most toxic components known to science.

Plastic pollution is harmful to human life

Even if you think that the islands of garbage in the ocean do not affect you or that you live in a very clean city without major pollution problems, you must remember that we live in an interconnected system, so in one way or another you end up being affected too.

For example, almost everything we eat has been severely affected, and not only because marine pollution has generated a dangerous presence of toxins in fish around the planet, but even some of the smallest actors in the process, such as the plankton, is being intoxicated in different degrees, and thereby also polluting a long list of animals in the food chain.

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