On a pristine Australian island the birds are so full of plastic they crunch
www.abc.net.au
It's an exclusive tourist destination and one of the most pristine places on the planet. It's the last place you would expect to find birds with bellies so full of plastic that they crunch if you squeeze them.
    • Aksamit@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      10·
      8 days ago

      Unless you eat colourful bits of plastic thinking they’re fishes or bugs, you’re unlikely to be swallowing bottlecaps and whatnot, but tiny bits of plastic shed off plastic food packaging into food constantly, so we are still getting a lot of microplastics in our diet.

        • MrMcGasion@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          7 days ago

          Not saying it isn’t a bad thing, but as Hank Green pointed out recently, remember that the “weight of a credit card” is at the high end of that estimate (the 5 grams) unless you are chewing on plastic pencaps or have unusually high exposure, you probably aren’t getting that much per week. The range is really broad.

          Now if we say more than one credit card a year? That uses the low end of the range, is still troubling, and isn’t spreading misinformation that everyone is consuming a credit card worth of plastic every week.

          Not being critical of you at all, I’ve quoted that myself in the past, but just wanted to spread the awareness about this stat that I had overlooked before too. And again, I’m not saying that much microplastic exposure is less bad health-wise, just that the “credit card a week” might be a bit sensationalized.

          • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            3·
            7 days ago

            That’s why I linked the article where it’s explicitly explained that the individual intake of course varies depending on the location and the lifestyle.

            In the end, the exact amount of plastic intake is not an important thing to discuss, but the fact that these problems undoubtedly will grow and there’s no sign of the packaging industry being regulated.