The Environmental Protection Agency has stated that 100% of all plastics ever created by humans are still in existence and continue to pollute our planet. One Green Planet calls plastics “the greatest threat to marine wildlife”. This is a significant environmental issue that impacts the health and well-being of both people and wildlife.

Larger pieces of plastic lead to suffocation, entanglement, laceration, infections and internal injuries. There are too many reports of marine life either physically entangled and killed or whose emaciated bodies upon necropsy contain stomachs full of plastic. Marine mammals, turtles and fish mistake the plastic for food and starve on this plastic. 

Plastic on a smaller size scale is perhaps even worse. Remember, most plastic is not recycled-only 10% is recycled by current estimates. Plastic is not biodegradable and breaks down into microplastic and nanoplastics which end up everywhere in the soil, rivers, ice beds and oceans. 

Because of the very tiny size, tiny zooplankton mistake the even tinier plastics for food and ingest the plastics. The zooplankton get ingested by bigger species of marine life and thus, plastics move up the food chain. Microplastics, linked to toxic chemicals and bound to other pollutants in the water, are eaten by marine animals and end up in their bodies and tissues, entering the food chain and leading to disastrous consequences for the health of our planet and for all its inhabitants. Plastics, bulk plastic or microplastic, end up in our living creatures. It is reported that 75% of deep ocean fish in the Northwest Atlantic have consumed plastic due to scarcity of food at the deep-sea level. Scientists have reported that 210 species of commercially caught fish have been found with ingested plastic. The highest levels of plastic have been found in mussels, oysters and scallops.

The implications of the severity of all this plastic are enormous. Microplastics and their associated toxic chemicals insidiously and repeatedly enter the food chain. The ingestion of microplastic not just harms and sickens but affects future generations with endocrine disrupting chemicals, decreasing reproductive rates for many species. 

Plastic contains harmful chemicals that are released into the environment and ecosystems. Additives such as phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA) leach out of plastic particles and disrupt hormone systems of vertebrates and invertebrates alike. Highly toxic and carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have all been isolated from plastic debris sampled from the marine environment. Just like the movement of microplastics up the food chain, these toxins too then move up the food chain in a process called “bioaccumulation”. Even though PCBs were banned decades ago, their presence still remains in the oceans. Research indicates for example that PCBs may be driving orca populations in the North Atlantic to extinction with contaminant levels among the highest in the world.

Nanoparticles are small enough to cause inflammation and cross into cells. This microplastic pollution has far reaching harmful effects on humans, animals and invertebrates alike.

And what the fish eat, we eat when we consume seafood. Plastics effects every living creature in this food chain, including us.  A New York Times article cited a study in Italy in which researchers analyzed the breast milk of 34 healthy mothers and microplastics were found in 75% of the submitted samples. Concerned over the growing concern of microplastics in seafood, Belgian scientists have estimated that seafood lovers would consume 11,000 plastic particles in one year from consuming mussels. Finally, in 2022, scientists from the Netherlands and the U.K. announced the discovery of plastic particles in living humans, inside the lungs of surgical patients and in the blood of donors.