Humans are surrounded by plastic. So are animals. While numerous studies have shown the wide-ranging health effects in humans linked to plastic, very few have looked at how plastic, especially microplastic, impacts wildlife. That’s beginning to change, contributor Sharon Guynup reports for Mongabay.
“Plastic pollution has been found on every continent and in every ocean, in people, terrestrial wildlife and marine wildlife,” said Leslie B. Hart, associate professor at the College of Charleston and an author of recent research that finds dolphins, like humans, are inhaling microplastic.
In humans, studies have found plastic in human brains, bone marrow, testicles, kidneys and newborn babies. Public health experts are concerned that plastic can “cause premature birth, low birth weight and stillbirth as well as leukemia, lymphoma, brain cancer, liver cancer, heart disease and stroke,” Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and environmental health expert, stated in a press conference.
The health implications for wildlife exposed to plastic, though, have historically been expensive and difficult to document, Guynup writes. Scientists are beginning to collect such data, she adds, and they are finding that plastic-associated health problems in wildlife frequently mirror those experienced by humans.
For instance, much like in humans, microplastics have been shown to damage the hearts of birds and spread throughout various organs in cod fish. There are also some data on the impacts of the even smaller nanoplastics: Oysters produce fewer eggs and zebrafish can pass nanoplastic particles to their embryos. In laboratory experiments, scientists found that microplastic in the lungs of rats can easily pass into the brains and hearts of their unborn babies. In adult mice, nanoplastic was found to cross the blood-brain barrier and cause dementia-like symptoms, particularly concerning for wild animals that need to be sharp to survive.
Both humans and wildlife are also exposed to the poor air quality and toxins associated with incinerating roughly 19% of plastic waste. Furthermore, plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, is contributing roughly 232 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the climate crisis each year, which causes suffering across both human and wildlife populations.
International efforts to address the plastic crisis are underway but falling short. Delegates from roughly 170 countries recently met in Busan, South Korea, for the United Nations global plastics treaty. Hopes were high that negotiators would agree to curb plastic production and address the growing plastic waste crisis. However, negotiations ended in failure as petrochemical states, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, opposed both a cap on plastic production and a phaseout of plastic chemicals linked to human and animal health concerns.
This is a summary of “Microplastics are sickening and killing wildlife, disrupting Earth systems” by Sharon Guynup.
This article was first published by Mongabay.com on 3 December 2024. Lead Image: by a_Different_Perspective via Pixabay (Public domain).
