Woodside, California
The environmental time bomb represented by plastic in the world’s oceans has at last come to the attention of the media. Thank you to the many people who have sent me links to recent coverage in the British press, much of it arising from the publication of a study by a team at the University of Plymouth.
Dr Richard Thompson suggests that microscopic pieces of plastic are being eaten by similarly microscopic organisms – and the digestion process then releases the toxins (like DDT) from the plastic. The toxins are absorbed by the tiny creature, which gets eaten by the slightly larger creature, and so on up the food chain. All the way up the food chain the toxins accumulate, until at the top of the ocean food chain are the carnivorous fish – which get eaten by us. So we end up eating the poisons that we created.
So what goes around comes around – and in a very obvious way. How could we ever have thought it would be otherwise? We live on a planet of finite size. We have polluted it and abused it with growing intensity, as our population has increased and our appetite for processed food and manufactured goods has increased. And the oceans have for a long time been regarded as a bottomless landfill – out of sight was out of mind.
But even the oceans, vast as they are, have reached their limit, and now we are reaping what we have sown – we are eating our own man-made poisons.
Do take a look at this article, and also follow the links on the right to other articles.
There are also links and articles on rozsavage.com, including an article kindly written by Dr Richard Thompson specifically for my website. Follow the links to other pages on this site revealing some startling facts and what we can all do to help. Click here for more on Oceans in Crisis.