Plastic is Destroying our Earth 🌎

Photo source: Lightkeeper

In my last post I discussed the ways to reduce plastic pollution.

Now we are going to take a step back and look at the impacts of plastic pollution on the earth. 

Specifically the impacts they have on the marine ecosystem. 

The potential impacts on the marine ecosystem are:

• Entanglement by debris leading to injury 
• Trapping of animals
• Ingestion of debris
• Debris damaging or clogging gills
• Navigational hazard

Although there are many negatives there are a few positives to plastic pollution. Floating debris can act as a substrate for long distance transport of rafting organisms and the debris on the seafloor can provide a shelter for small animals.

Although I have listed some positives the negatives greatly outweighs  the positive. 

In the list of impacts i stated ingestion of debris. What this simply means is that organisms are eating plastic simply because it looks, smells and sounds like food. 

Reports of plastic debris ingestion are widespread and are increasing. They repot ingestion of plastic in seabirds, sea turtles, manatees, seals, whales, fishes and cetaceans. 

95% of 1,295 seabirds in the North Sea contained plastic in their stomaches. A stomach full of nonnutritive plastic is not beneficial to an organism. The ingestion plastic causes a lot of harm. It was shown that the ingestion of plastic reduced the fat reserves of animals. 

Photo source: Joe McDonald/ Corbis

It is said that the plastic in the organisms stomaches causes them to have a reduced storage capacity in their stomaches. This causes false satiation leading to a reduced appetite. It also causes an obstruction of the gut. The ingestion of plastic can cause internal injury like a perforated gut causing death. 

The last harm that plastic ingestion can cause is contamination by chemicals. Animals that ingest plastic debris may also be at risk of contamination by chemicals associated with plastics that are incorporated during manufacture or that accumulate from contaminated environmental matrices such as sediment or seawater. Many of these substances are known to be persistent and bioaccumulative.  

References:

Lavender, K (2016) Plastics in the Marine Environment Annual Review of Marine Science Vol 9:205-229