Are microscopic plastic, even toothpaste.

With growing concerns over microplastics, many countries, including Korea, are trying to reduce plastic emissions. But in fact, plastic is so widely used that there is plastic in places we didn't think of.

 

Even in toothpaste, microplastic is...

 

Small, rough grains in cleansers or toothpaste that are effective in exfoliating the skin are also plastic. Very small plastics, called microbeads, have recently become the enemy of marine pollution.

 

Microbeads contained in products on the market are mainly made of polyethylene, also made of polypropylene, polyethyl metacrylate and nylon. Microbeads are plastics that are smaller than 1mm in size. A size less than 5mm is called microplastics, which are much smaller than that. These small microbeads seep into rivers and seas through sewers without being filtered out during water treatment.

microplastics that can destroy the ecosystem

 

What happens to the microbeads that flow into the sea? For seabirds, this small, sparkling microbead can look like a fish egg. It is said that seabirds are already eating plastic like a staple food. Turtles mistakenly eat vinyl as jellyfish, and whales are found dead due to ruptured stomachs because of non-rotting plastic.

 

Some studies have found microplastics in 49 of the 64 anchovies caught in Tokyo, Japan, in the summer of 2015. Australia's Federal Scientific Industry Research Organization (CSIRO) released a study that found that 99.8 percent of all seabirds will eat plastic by 2050, compiling and analyzing data on food behavior and marine plastic of 186 species in 42 species, including albatross, seagulls and penguins. There are also gloomy predictions that the sea will have more plastic than fish.

 

Fish don't just eat plastic. Small split plastics are stuck in scales or enter the body through gills. 267 marine mammals are injured or killed by plastic. Seaweeds such as seaweed and seaweed, coral reefs and oysters are also at risk from microplastics. The research team led by Dr. Arno Hube of the French National Oceanographic Research Institute (IFREMER) conducted an experiment to transplant oysters that live in the Pacific Ocean into water that released polystyrene particles. Two months later, the number of ovarian cells in oysters decreased by 35 percent from normal, the frequency of sperm activity was also found to be 23 percent slower than normal, and the growth rate of oysters was also significantly slower. In addition, the plastic-eating oysters emitted endocrine disruptors.

 

You can also expect drinking water to be contaminated by microbeads. Large plastic dumped in the sea is split into small pieces by sunlight and waves. How much smaller can plastic be? One-thousandth of a millimeter, or one-thousandth of a millimeter, was also found. Smaller and invisible do not disintegrate or disappear. It only becomes more dangerous because it is small and invisible.

 

The first report on marine plastic waste was already released in the 1960s, but it didn't come up much. However, the attitude of coping with microbeads is quite different. The first international conference on microplastics issues was held in 2008, but the sense of crisis is high. Each U.S. state declared a series of ban on microbeads in 2015, and late last year, Obama signed a law to prevent water pollution that bans the use of microbeads in all washing products since 2017. Multinational sanitary product producers such as Unilever, L'Oreal and Johnson & Johnson also rushed to declare a halt to production.

 

Plastic encroached upon our lives more than a century after birth. Sitting in a plastic chair, I didn't know even though I was eating with plastic bowls and plastic forks. I didn't expect us to eat plastic. Already, the stomach of seabirds and fish is full of plastic.

 

Written by Lee So-young, a science columnist

 

Source : http://scent.ndsl.kr/site/main/archive/article/%EC%B9%98%EC%95%BD%EC%97%90%EB%8F%84-%EB%AF%B8%EC%84%B8%ED%94%8C%EB%9D%BC%EC%8A%A4%ED%8B%B1%EC%9D%B4-%EC%9E%88%EB%8B%A4