We live in a throwaway society. The next time you’re in a grocery store, take a look around you and note the number of items packaged in plastic. The problem is, many of these petroleum-based plastics will last forever. So we have products for short-term consumption packaged in materials that survive for centuries, endangering wildlife… Read More »
By Layal Liverpool Plastic baby bottles can shed microparticles into the contentsEmma Kim/Getty Images Plastic feeding bottles release an average of 4 million microplastic particles per litre into baby formula during preparation, but it still isn’t clear whether ingesting microplastics is harmful to infant health. John Boland at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and his… Read More »
Bacteria living on microplastic pollution in marine environments include a number of pathogenic species as well as a few that might be helpful Plastic rubbish strewn on the beach, Lazarus Island, Singapore. Lazarus Island was one of the field sites where microplastics were collected for this study.(Credit: Jnzl / CC BY 2.0) Jnzl via a… Read More »
Tests reveal both tap water and bottled water1 contain microplastics, as does your household dust2 and many foods, especially seafood3,4 and sea salt,5 but also any food that has been stored in plastic packaging. The suspicion that we’re consuming our own plastic pollution was recently reconfirmed when researchers reported the discovery of microplastic particles in… Read More »