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How much plastic is in your diet?
Why in news?
- Researchers said that people worldwide could be ingesting 5 g of microscopic plastic particles every week, equivalent in weight to a credit card.
More in news
- Study findings:(1) Coming mostly from tap and especially bottled water.(2) Invisible bits of polymer were also found in shellfish, beer and salt.(3) The findings are the first to estimate the sheer weight of plastics consumed by individual humans: about 250 g over the course of a year.(4) Average American eats and drinks in about 45,000 plastics particles smaller than 130 microns annually, while breathing in roughly the same number.
- Concerns:(1) In the last two decades, the world has produced as much plastic as during the rest of history.(2) According to a report the industry is set to grow by 4% a year until 2025.(3) More than 75% of all plastics winds up as waste.(4) A third of that is dumped or leaches into Nature, polluting land, rivers and the sea.(5) According to The New Plastics Economy report, ocean will contain one metric tons of plastic for every three metric tons of fish by 2025.(6) Plastic particles have recently been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, and blanketing the most pristine snows in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain.
- Way forward:(1) If we don’t want it in our bodies, we need to stop the millions of tons of plastic that continue leaking into Nature every year.
Source
The hindu