BY SHAY CULLEN
OUR MODERN world depends on plastic to sustain its present lifestyle.
But that lifestyle built on the plastic revolution has its dangerous dark side. Everything we humans use and discard can have dire consequences for the planet. Garbage is everywhere and it is damaging our health.
Plastic pollution is destroying many creatures and poisoning our air and rivers and oceans and people don’t seem to care. It is dangerous to health because it is a destructive chemical-based pollutant and it is the one-time use of disposable plastic stuff that is so dangerous and damaging to our lives, our health, our environment.
The fish we eat have plastic in them because the vast oceans are filling up with discarded plastic.
If you Google “Plastic Pollution in Manila” you will get a sight that will make you cry or angry. You will see photos of the esteros, canals, rivers and Manila Bay choked with millions of discarded plastic bottles, cups, straws, bags, nets and wrappings. Eventually some drifts into the far ocean.
These single-use plastic items make up 40 percent of all annual plastic production worldwide. They are with us forever, you might say, and will not disintegrate for about 400 years.
The millions of tons of floating plastic will eventually join the great Pacific garbage patch that covers a surface area that is 1.6 million square kilometers. That is three times the size of France. It is swirling in ocean currents between California and Hawaii and elsewhere.
There are many other lesser known floating garbage islands where our discarded single-use plastics end up.
The ocean currents sweep up the floating plastic in gyre regions as they are called. An estimated 297 million tons of plastic is out there on the ocean currents distributed as follows: in the North Pacific (36 percent), Indian Ocean (22 percent), North Atlantic (21 percent), South Pacific (8 percent) and the South Atlantic (4.5 percent). The Mediterranean Sea has 8.5 percent. We humans sure dirty our own planet.
What is most dangerous to all living creatures in the short and long term is the damage to our health from micro-plastics. The plastic bottles, cups, straws and bags eventually breakdown into tiny micro-plastic particles and even Nano-plastics.
A massive eight million tonnes every year float into the oceans and tons of plastic dust are blown into the atmosphere from the tons of plastic in open pit garbage dumps. We breathe the dust into our lungs. It may be necessary to always wear a mask.
The micro-plastics get into everything- our throats, lungs and stomachs – and they harm wildlife, too. Fish are found dead their stomachs filled with plastic bags. Tests have shown micro plastics are in many caught fish on our dinner tables. I have gone vegetarian.
Birds are dying by the thousands from eating plastic items. Penguins, albatrosses and many sea gulls have died as a result of eating floating or submerged plastics. (To be continued)/PN
