The life of microplastic: how fragments move through plants, insects, animals – and you | Plastics

The beginning: a single thread

The story begins with a single polyester thread, dislodged from the weaving of a cheap pink acrylic rider while it revolves around a washing machine. This washing load will lose hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic and thread fragments – up to 700,000 in this cycle of the washing machine.

With billions of other synthetic microscopic fibers, our wire moves through household waste pipes. Often, he ends up being purification sludge propagates on the ground of a farmer to help crops to grow. The sludge is used as organic fertilizers in the United States and Europe, inadvertently transforming the soil into a huge global reservoir of microplastics. A wastewater treatment plant in Wales revealed that 1% of the weight of treatment sludge was plastic.

From there, he goes up in the food chain through insects, birds, mammals and even humans. Perhaps the life of our sweater as a garment will end soon, with only a few outings before it knows of narrowed and bobbling washing, to be thrown. But the life of our thread will be long. He may have been part of a rider for a few weeks, but he could travel to the natural world for centuries.

In the world of the soil and verses

Extended on the fields in the form of water or sludge, our tiny fiber gets a path in the fabric of the soil ecosystems. A living vessel under a field of wheat drives its path through the ground, confusing the wire by a little old leaf or root. The worm consumes it – but cannot treat it as an ordinary organic matter.

The Ver joins nearly one in three earthworms which contain plastic, according to a study published in April, as well as a quarter of slugs and snails which ingest plastic while they graze on the ground. Peacock caterpillars, blue powdered and red admiral butterflies also contain plastic, perhaps by feeding on contaminated leaves, depending on the search.

With plastic in its intestine, the fucked up in terms of earth will have more difficulty digesting nutrients and is likely to start losing weight. Damage may not be visible, but for insects, eating plastic has been linked to stunted growth, reduced fertility and problems with liver, kidneys and stomach. Even some of the smallest forms of life in our soil, such as mites and nematodes – which help maintain land fertility – are negatively affected by plastic.

Plastic pollution in the marine environment has been largely documented, but a UN ratio found the soil contains more microplastic pollution than the oceans. This counts not only for soil health, but because scary ramps such as beetles, slugs and snails form the constituent elements of food chains. Our worm now allows this plastic fiber to become an international traveler.

In the food chain, in mammals and birds

In a suburban garden, a hedgehog reshuffled with a dozen invertebrates in one night, consuming plastic fibers within them. One of them is our worm.

A study that examined the faeces of seven hedgehogs, revealed that four of them contained plastics, one of which contained 12 polyester fibers, some of which were pink. If the hedgehogs do not live in your country, replace another small mammal or scurressing bird: the same study revealed that mice, campagnols and rats also ate plastic, either directly or via contaminated prey.

Birds that eat insects such as marshes, claws and nestles also ingest plastic via their prey. A study earlier this year revealed for the first time that birds had microplastics in their lungs because they also inhale them. “Microplastics are now omnipresent at all levels of the food network,” said Professor Fiona Mathews, environmental biologist at the University of Sussex. The meat, milk and blood of farm animals also contain microplastics.

At the top of the food chain, humans consume at least 50,000 microplastic particles per year. They are in our food, our water and the air that we breathe. Plastic fragments have been found in the blood, sperm, lungs, breast milk, bone marrow, placenta, testicles and brain.

Wash in rivers and blow in the wind

Even if it rises the food chain of animals, our polyester fiber has not been broken down. At one point, the thread returns to dirt when the creature that consumed its host dies, and a new adventure begins. The body will decompose, but the polyester fiber will last. Once in the ground, it is plowed by the farmer before the crops were sown. But it may not stay there long – strong winds blow the dry soil and degraded in the air, carrying with it a pink plastic fragment. In heavy rains, the fiber could be swept away in a river flowing towards the sea: a large source of marine contamination is the runoff.

This displacement process through natural systems over the years has been called “plastic spiral”. Scientists have discovered that microplastics equivalent to 300 m of plastic water bottles have pleased the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree and other American national parks. Even the most remote places are contaminated. A scientist has found 12,000 microplastic particles one liter in samples of Arctic Sea Ice, swept by oceanic currents and blowing by the wind.

Infiltrating plants, flowers and crops

Over time, our plastic thread has still not rotten, but has been divided into fragments, leaving tiny pieces of itself in the air, water and the ground. Over the years, it could become so small that it infiltrated the wall of the root cells of a plant because it aspires the nutrients of the soil. Nanoplastics have been found in the leaves and fruits of plants and, once inside, they can affect the capacity of the photosynthesis plant, suggests research. Here, inside the microscopic systems of the plant, the bits of our pink fiber cause all kinds of ravages – blocking nutritious and water channels, harming cells and releasing toxic chemicals. It has been shown that staples such as wheat, rice and lettuce contain plastic, which is a way in the human food chain.

Eight billion tonnes of plastic and counting

Since its humble beginnings, our fiber may have traveled around the world, losing pieces of itself along the way and making its way in almost all strata of different ecosystems and regulations of the natural world. Extracting it once it starts this trip is extremely difficult. The best way to prevent its spread is to stop it at the start – before the worm, before the ground, before the washing machine, even before the rider is made.

Since the 1950s, humans have produced more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic – equivalent to the weight of a billion elephants. It finds its way in the packaging, textiles, agricultural materials and consumer goods. Choosing to live without is almost impossible.

Rapid fashion companies, drinking giants, supermarket channels and large agricultural companies have failed to take responsibility for the damage that this has caused, explains Emily Thrift, who does plastic research in the environment of the University of Sussex. She says individual consumers can reduce their consumption but should not think that it is entirely their responsibility. “If you do this level of waste, there must be a form of penalty to do so,” she says. “I really believe that until there are policies and ways to keep the big responsible companies, I don’t see it changing much.”