Your Favourite Seafood Almost Certainly Has Tiny Plastic Particles, Says Study
A new study looked at five popular seafood bought from a market in Australia, and researchers found microplastics in each and every sample.
Plastic has surely been both a boon and a curse for humanity. While its existence allowed for products to be mass-produced for cheap, the non-biodegradable nature of plastic surely leaves a mark on our planet that isn¡¯t going away for several years.
And now, research reveals that this plastic is also trickling down into our food.
Representational Image: Reuters
A new study (published in Environmental Science & Technology) looked at five popular seafood bought from a market in Australia -- five wild blue crabs, ten farmed tiger prawns, ten wild squids, ten farmed oysters and ten wild sardines -- where researchers found microplastics in each and every sample.
They also looked at the kind of plastic that was found in their bodies and discovered that the plastics were commonly used in packaging and synthetic textiles such as polystyrene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene and poly(methyl methacrylate). Moreover, Polyvinylchloride was present in all samples, whereas polyethylene was in highest concentrations.
Francisca Ribeiro, from the University of Queensland, Australia explains, "Considering an average serving, a seafood eater could be exposed to approximately 0.7 milligrams of plastic when ingesting an average serving of oysters or squid, and up to 30 mg of plastic when eating sardines, respectively. For comparison, 30 milligrams is the average weight of a grain of rice."
Representational Image: Reuters
Researchers also discovered that the amount of plastic consumed is different in different species, Riberio states, "Our findings show that the amount of plastics present varies greatly among species, and differs between individuals of the same species. From the seafood species tested, sardines had the highest plastic content, which was a surprising result."
While we still don¡¯t know if consuming such fish with microplastics can harm humans, concerns surely loom. It is no news that the ocean is one of the places where plastic goes to die, but in this process, it manages to contaminate the marine food web and even kill several. We¡¯ve already seen various instances of dead whales and turtles on the beach.
