Microplastics
What Are Microplastics
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles. Microplastics is a piece of plastic between 0.3 and 5 millimeters in diameter. Microplastics comes from degraded larger pieces of plastic. When larger pieces of plastic waste are disposed of in the environment they get weathered and degrade. These larger pieces of plastic break down into smaller and smaller pieces and are eventually reduced to microplastic particles. Because of plastic pollution, microplastic has become a problem for the environment. The problem that microplastics produce is that like plastic items of any size, they do not readily break down into harmless molecules in a short period of time. Plastics can take hundreds or thousands of years to decompose and in the meantime, they wreak havoc on the environment.
Microplastics in Animals
In the ocean, microplastics are often consumed by marine animals. Microplastics are found in the ocean because wastes are thrown into the ocean and in those wastes, there are plastics and these plastics will degrade to microplastics. Because the size of microplastics are so small, marine animals may accidentally ingest them. Marine animals may also get entangled by plastics. Microplastics in the ocean will affect many aspects of the marine fish and marine food chain. The microplastics can have a toxic effect on fish and other aquatic life, including reducing food intake, delaying growth, causing oxidative damage and abnormal behavior. When microplastics are ingested into the body by marine life, they will accumulate in the digestive tract and block the digestive tract, resulting in decline in feeding capacity and reduce energy reserves in the body, thereby affecting the growth of marine life. A study done by IOP Science found out that microplastics can harm the reproductive health of marine life. After the microplastics enter the marine fishery biological tissues and organs, they will trigger a series of immune responses.
Fish plays an important role in the marine ecosystem and its health level can be directly related to the stability of the structure and function of the marine ecosystem. Moreover, because fish is an important source for humans to obtain animal protein, marine pollutants can enter the human body by enriching in fish and threaten human health.
Microplastics in Humans
Microplastics can enter the human body through ingestion and inhalation where they may be taken up in various organs and might affect health. Currently, the science is too unclear to draw conclusions because measuring possible adverse effects of plastics on humans is far more difficult than on animals. Unlike birds and fish, human subjects can’t intentionally be fed a diet of plastics. In laboratory tests, microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells, including both allergic reactions and cell death. According to a study done by Kari Nadeau, plastics identified in lungs could cause lung irritation, dizziness, headaches, asthma, and cancer. Currently there is no clear conclusion whether the plastics are just simply there and inert or are they going to lead to an immune response by the body that will lead to fatal diseases. We know these microplastics are all over the place. Scientists still don’t know whether their presence in the body leads to a problem because duration is very important. One thing is for sure though, it is better to prevent it rather than regret it later on.
How to Solve This Problem
Once plastics break down into microplastics and drift throughout the water in the open ocean, they are impossible to recover. The solution is to prevent plastic waste from entering rivers and seas. This could be accomplished with improved waste management systems and recycling.
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One of the way to solve this is by recycling the PET bottle. Instead of letting the PET bottle become a waste by letting it degrade in the ocean or other places, we can collect the used PET bottle and recycle and reprocess it into a new PET bottle. If we do this, the plastic wont be wasted after a single use, we can infinitely recycle and reprocess it.
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Theta Plastic is here to contribute solve this problem by collecting the used PET Bottle. We are here to collect and sort PET bottle from other wastes.