73 Percent of Fish In the Northwestern Atlantic Have Microplastics In Their Guts 88
According to a new study published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, microplastics have been found in the stomachs of nearly three out of every four mesopelagic fish caught in the Northwest Atlantic. "These findings are worrying, as the affected fish could spread microplastics throughout the ocean," reports Phys.Org. "The fish are also prey for fish eaten by humans, meaning that microplastics could indirectly contaminate our food supply through the transfer of associated microplastic toxins." From the report: Microplastics are small plastic fragments that have accumulated in the marine environment following decades of pollution. These fragments can cause significant issues for marine organisms that ingest them, including inflammation, reduced feeding and weight-loss. Microplastic contamination may also spread from organism to organism when prey is eaten by predators. Since the fragments can bind to chemical pollutants, these associated toxins could accumulate in predator species. Mesopelagic fish serve as a food source for a large variety of marine animals, including tuna, swordfish, dolphins, seals and sea birds. Typically living at depths of 200-1,000 meters, these fish swim to the surface at night to feed then return to deeper waters during the day.
The researchers caught mesopelagic fish at varying depths, then examined their stomachs for microplastics back in the lab. They used a specialized air filter so as not to introduce airborne plastic fibers from the lab environment. The team found a wide array of microplastics in the fish stomachs -- with a whopping 73% of the fish having ingested the pollutants.
The researchers caught mesopelagic fish at varying depths, then examined their stomachs for microplastics back in the lab. They used a specialized air filter so as not to introduce airborne plastic fibers from the lab environment. The team found a wide array of microplastics in the fish stomachs -- with a whopping 73% of the fish having ingested the pollutants.
What percentage have *grit*? (Score:1, Insightful)
And what percentage have grit in their guts? Or sand in their guts? Or bits of coral in their guts?
I can see where you're heading with this, but you haven't established anything special about microplastics in the food chain, vs other grit in the food chain. There's just nothing special about one class of inert crap, vs any other class of inert crap.
Re: What percentage have *grit*? (Score:1)
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Don't eat their guts. Problem solved.
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And all this time I've been warned against eating tuna especially, because they accumulated mercury... Wow. the future IS plastic.
Whoosh (Score:2)
Theoretically sand doesn't leech dioxins into the fish's body. That's been mentioned in OP and TFA. You're the one claiming that plastic is inert, and I'd be interested in how you came to that conclusion.
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Plastics! Deeeelish! (Score:1)
I'm not an "apologist" for polluters, it seems the oceans have become quite the dump for plastic waste, and it's a shame.
However...
Do these microplastics affect the fish's health and / or significantly impact their lifespan? If not then is there some other reason to be concerned?
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Even if you don't care about the fish, eating fish which are contaminated with micro-plastics also affects human health.
Re:Plastics! Deeeelish! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I mean, plastic usually contains Bisphenol A for starters - which is a known endocrine disruptor, amongst other things. There are also a myriad of other similar chemicals in plastics which have different health effects.
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And does it get metabolized when in plastic? If it's just there in the plastic but completely inert there could be no health effect. How much of it do you need before it has a meaningful effect, we get trace amounts of all sorts of toxic stuff all the time. And how much of it is there in the fish? Quantity matters.
By contrast, mercury is already known to bioaccumulate in fish in sufficient quantities to have health effects on humans.
At this point, we can only speculate, but this quote from the article seems
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plastic usually contains Bisphenol A
Most plastic does not contain bisphenol-A. BPA is used in epoxy resins and in polycarbonate, which are together less than 2% of plastic production. It is not normally used in other plastics.
The most common plastic in the ocean is polyethylene, which is inert and basically harmless.
Re:Plastics! Deeeelish! (Score:4, Insightful)
LDPE is like a sponge and it absorbs lots of other crap as it floats around for years in the ocean. Crap that you don't want in a fish's belly, but even uncontaminated PE can be problematic for a fish [nature.com].
Saying PE is basically harmless is an over simplification and really only applies to normal uses of the material. There are exceptional cases where it can cause harm. It's the business of researchers to look at exceptional cases and see how our assumptions match up to reality.
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Does it?
You actually need to prove that statement. I'm not saying its wrong, I actually think its probably correct, however its not science until its tested and validated a couple times.
We were lied to about the dangers of tobacco for half a century. Doctors at one time were pimping cigarettes. Millions of deaths occurred due to primary use and secondhand exposure before any tobacco company ever admitted their product was deadly.
Lies and deception surround our meat-processing industry that purposely shrouds itself in secrecy. Ever seen the inside of the processing plant where your meat comes from? Do you really know how that food source is made? I didn't think so.
I don't have to say a
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TL; DR - Prove that statement? How about you first prove that Greed N. Corruption won't distort the truth. The "science" is far too often bought and sold these days in order to protect profits.
Sometimes, it's merely self-righteousness and stupidity. During the American Prohibition period, a plasticizer [wikipedia.org] was added to Jamaican ginger (Jake) to foil inspectors testing for ginger solids meant to make the alcohol unpalatable.
A pair of amateur chemists and bootleggers, Harry Gross and Max Reisman, worked to develop an alternative adulterant that would pass the tests, but still be somewhat palatable. They sought advice from a professor at MIT who did not realize it was meant for internal consumption. They settled on a plasticizer, tri-o-tolyl phosphate (also known as tri-ortho cresyl phosphate, TOCP, or Tricresyl phosphate), that was able to pass the Treasury Department's tests but preserved Jake's drinkability. TOCP was originally thought to be non-toxic; however, it was later determined to be a neurotoxin that causes axonal damage to the nerve cells in the nervous system of human beings, especially those located in the spinal cord. The resulting type of paralysis is now referred to as organophosphate-induced delayed neuropathy, or OPIDN.
Re: Plastics! Deeeelish! (Score:1)
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OK, why don't you eat some microplastic with every meal for a few months and then let us know how you are doing?
Then it will have been tested.
What's that you say? You don't want to eat microplastic? But that's very irrational: it hasn't been conclusively proved to be harmful.
In fact, you may have unwittingly opened up a gigantic new field of research. For instance, AFAIK it has never been scientifically proved that eating ground glass is harmful to humans. Nor dropping them off skyscrapers... Just think of
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"eating fish which are contaminated with micro-plastics"
Eating fish gut isn't a common event for me. Now, fish meal is a problem, but so far as I know I don't get that in my diet either.
Do I now avoid buying fish based food for my dog? Maybe not. He's a dog.
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And North Korea is actually called Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Doesn't make it so.
Scientific method or faith. Those are your options. If the plastic is harmful surely there are tons of scientific tests and journals detailing the harm?
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So you can't provide any links?
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So you can't provide any links either?
Re: Plastics! Deeeelish! (Score:3)
Did you read the summary? Not only do the plastics bind to chemical pollutants, the stomachs or the fish get full of plastic leading to reduced feeding. Both those things will lead to lower lifespans and likely, reduced reproduction rates. When you consider bio accumulation as you work up the food chain, it just makes life even harder for animals like tuna and dolphins.
Over long time scales, this will work itself out, but who knows how long that will take and how species will be impacted by the time they ev
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Oh please. 'My argument' hardly hinged on that one statement, so it's hard to characterize it as 'extremely weak'.
I'll concede that 'stomach fullness' apparently isn't an issue, but, from the paper:
"Microplastics have previously been shown to adversely impact invertebrate species such as lugworms, causing weight loss, reduced feeding activity and inflammation (Besseling et al., 2013; Wright et al., 2013), and detrimental effects on the intestinal functioning of seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) have also been
Re:Plastics! Deeeelish! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do these microplastics affect the fish's health and / or significantly impact their lifespan? If not then is there some other reason to be concerned?
Well, the problem is with science itself. Or rather with the way science is covered in the media [youtube.com]. The media wants answers, but the first step in science is finding good questions. You can't answer a question like that until you know the phenomenon exists, but people want to jump straight to what it means.
If there were one thing I wish the educational system instilled in people, it would be the capacity of being concerned without necessarily being alarmed. People come out with basically two easy options to fall back on: alarmism and denialism.
Bioaccumulation (Score:2, Interesting)
Good thing I don't eat the stomachs of fish. Now if their meat were contaminated with microplastics, then I might worry about it accumulating in my body. Some quick research [plattsburgh.edu] suggests that microplastics bioaccumulate, as implied by the summary. What really irks me is that 'farm-raised' fish, which should theoretically be free of bioaccumulation problems present in the wild, are fed cut-up wild-caught fish, so the pollutants get fed to them anyway. Where's my grass-fed Kobe fish?!
The problem is not the stomach (Score:2)
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But if these chemicals bind to plastics and these plastics stay in fishes' guts, that's a good thing*. It's less chemicals that pass into their bloodstream and muscles, which we do eat.
*Well of course not having the chemicals in the water in the first place would be better.
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The bind to plastic while in the free ocean like a little sponge.. The digestive system of an animal is designed to pull stuff apart and absorb it.
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The digestive system of an animal is designed to pull stuff apart and absorb it.
Faster than they'd absorb it straight out of the water or when consumed with their regular food? I'd think that the binding energy of toxins to plastic would need to be overcome. And that would reduce concentrations available in the digestive tract.
Dumb fish (Score:1)
Stop eating plastic you dumb fish
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Your statement reveals that you don't understand it all.
Let me explain it to you - micro-particles of non-digestible or difficult-to-digest stuff gives intestines more to deal with than they should otherwise.
This means they have to work harder, or work less efficiently, or the good work is overpowered by the "dealing-with-shit" stuff. This means that the organism they support doesn't reach its full potential.
TL:DR version: non-digestible input means your guts work less better. Get it?
If that's too difficult
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I find myself curious: where did you find the "20% decomposed plastic bags" figure? TFA only mentions that 73% of mesopelagic fish had some amount of microplastics in their stomachs, without mentioning an actual amount....
Absent a source for your number, I've got to assume you're just scaremongering (IOW you made up a scary number to try to bolster an argument - your prvilieg
Rhetoric but ... (Score:2)
If that's too difficult for you to cope with, then try supplementing your diet with 20% decomposed plastic bags and get back to us.
It would be a new data point for science. So please proceed.
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TL:DR version: non-digestible input means your guts work less better. Get it?
If that's too difficult for you to cope with, then try supplementing your diet with 20% decomposed plastic bags and get back to us.
Um. If something is non-digestible, doesn't that mean you just shit it out? If you can't digest it, it just passes through. Much like when you feed corn to dogs. They can't digest corn, so it comes out looking much the way it did going in, yellow kernels, unaffected by digestion.
Also, I'd like to point out, if it can't be digested and somehow remains lodged in the gut, that wouldn't affect the parts we'd be interested in for eating. We don't eat the entrails. Now I suppose there is the matter of it so
Re: What a surprise (Score:2)
TL:DR should really go at the start as it's a summary, rather like an abstract... not to difficult to understand eh?
As for the plastics, as another poster pointed out, the fish will just shit it out.
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Every waste known to man, including nuclear, could be in the ocean.
Or in the air! hold your breath.
How much? (Score:3, Interesting)
They examined the stomach contents of fish. Okay.
They found "microplastics" in about three out of four fish. Okay.
How much? It couldn't be a lot, because they were worried about contaminating the samples with microplastics from the air itself.
That means that the amounts they were looking for were literally microscopic, and very, very low in volume.
It's more a testament to the ability to find incredibly small amounts of the stuff than any indication that the amount they found was large.
This is a lot like the "we found Fukushima radiation in the ocean off the US coast" story - where the amount of cesium was unimaginably small - three ATOMS of the stuff per cubic meter...
Re:How much? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a lot like the "we found Fukushima radiation in the ocean off the US coast" story - where the amount of cesium was unimaginably small - three ATOMS of the stuff per cubic meter...
Radiation is a naturally occurring emission that is all around us, which is why the Fukushima thing is absurd.
On the other hand plastics are not, and they are something we have been using on this earth for a very short time period and yet are not part of the food cycle. Comparing the two is silly.
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Comparing the stories is very useful, though - the breathless "we found X in Y!" idea is pretty much the same - and is generally harmless in both cases. No, plastics aren't a mysterious thing that's going to kill us, or make us sick, or anything like that. So far, alarmism of this type tends to end up being The Boy Who Cried Wolf, all over again.
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the breathless "we found X in Y!" idea is pretty much the same
One is naturally occurring. The other is not. Just because they are harmless in their current concentrations doesn't mean that this is something to worry about and attempt to solve.
Radiation: It existed before, it exists now, no conclusions can be drawn for the future.
Plastic: There was none, now there is some in the food cycles, something very worth watching going forward and even worth starting to do something about NOW.
Or would you prefer for every case of the abnormal to require people to get sick or di
Good (Score:1)
Earth plus plastic (Score:2)
The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic.
The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allows us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself. Didn
We may HAVE to farm our fish (Score:2)
Right now, fish that are not farmed are advertised as "wild caught" because, you know, that sounds better. The term makes us think of pristine Alaskan streams. If farmed fish raised in filtered water canbe advertised as "plastic free," this will flip.
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What do you think they feed the farmed fish?
When you farm fish, we have the opportunity to break oceanic pollution cycles by feeding them vegetables and grains:
https://phys.org/news/2016-06-... [phys.org]
Soylent Green is people! (Score:2)
Bullshit! (Score:2, Interesting)
Father owns a fishing business in a classic New England fishing town.
The size of his catch each year since 1980 has been the same size. The average fish size (which he keeps track of) has a plus/minus deviation of about a quarter kilo each year. That's 150 tons each haul.
More alarmist bullshite, just like the Mercury claims to try and clamp down on an otherwise very healthy blue collar trade.
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depends on which species your talking about doesn't it?
Here's cod
https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/p... [noaa.gov]
and you're really gonna sit there and tell me that bluefin tuna catches are the same size since 1980. now that's some bullshit.
fishing is anything but a healthy trade, it's freaking dangerous and overfishing is a well-documented problem.
Plastics (Score:2)