What are Microplastics?
A great amount of plastic is accumulating in the world’s oceans, arriving there through rivers and lakes and gutters and storm drains. All of these are situated on land but empty the rubbish dumped into them into the oceans.
Plastic floating in the oceans gets broken down into pieces. Some pieces are so tiny that they are barely visible; those that are less than 5 mm in length are called microplastics. One type of microplastic, however, is made in our factories. It is called a microbead. Microbeads are tiny bits of plastic that are used as ingredients in products for a variety of uses, including health care. Body washes, face scrubs and even some toothpastes may contain microbeads.
As our bathroom water too ends up in the ocean, so do the microbeads. Microplastics are extremely harmful to fish, seabirds, turtles and other marine life because if they are ingested, they cause intestinal injury or accumulate in the stomach of the eater, causing grave digestive problems. Some animals do not directly eat microplastics but they eat fish that eat microplastics and so they too end up with an accumulation ofmicroplastics in their bodies. Thousands of marine mammals are killed each year after eating microplastics, which they mistake for food.
With plastic creating havoc all over the globe, even in the farthest reaches of the planet, we should be cautious as to how we use this useful but potentially dangerous polymer. Even carelessly throwing away a plastic straw after use can have undesirable consequences. The straw could find its way into a gutter and then to the sea and eventually contribute to the premature death of some sea animal on the other side of the world.
