The Horrors of Plastic Pollution

From BestLife: “All over the globe, there are signs that plastic pollution is doing more than blighting the scenery; it is also making its way into the food chain. Some of the most obvious victims are the dead seabirds that have been washing ashore in startling numbers, their bodies packed with plastic: things like bottle caps, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, and colored scraps that, to a foraging bird, resemble baitfish. (One animal dissected by Dutch researchers contained 1,603 pieces of plastic.) And the birds aren’t alone. All sea creatures are threatened by floating plastic, from whales down to zooplankton. There’s a basic moral horror in seeing the pictures: a sea turtle with a plastic band strangling its shell into an hourglass shape; a humpback towing plastic nets that cut into its flesh and make it impossible for the animal to hunt. More than a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and countless fish die in the North Pacific each year, either from mistakenly eating this junk or from being ensnared in it and drowning.”

See Also: Sewage-based fertilizer may be poisoning our food, Gulp: The Medicines In Your Drinking Water, US Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2006 Decreased 1.5% from Prior Year; Transportation Accounts for 27% of Total GHG, 33% of CO2, Save the planet; burn the universities, and Environment: Elephant Culling and Crisis in The Mara.

[tags]turtle, hourglass, deformed, pollution, sea turtle, picture, img, pic, plastic, tie band[/tags]