We’re currently in a “plastic age” where we make a lot of plastic for various needs1. It’s predicted that by 2050, we’ll be producing more than 34,000 million metric tons of plastic2. Miserably, only 9% of the plastic we use gets recycled, 12% is burned, and the rest, a whopping 79%, ends up buried in the ground3. In 2020, Asia, North America, and Europe accounted for 49%, 19%, and 15% of the world’s plastic, respectively. Asia, North America, and Europe each contributed 49%, 19%, and 15%, respectively, of the world’s plastics output in 2020, which is close to 370 million Metric Tons (Mt)4. On an individual level, each person makes over 130 kg of plastic waste every year5. The problem is that a lot of this plastic waste ends up in the soil, where it breaks down into tiny pieces like fragments, fibers, and pellets6. We call these tiny pieces Microplastics (MPs).
I don’t know anything about biology but that’s not how I imagined that would work.
Toxins concentrate as you climb trophic levels. It’s why tuna has so much mercury in it compared to other fish.
I don’t think that has anything to do with what we’re talking about.
Are microplastics “a toxin”?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7567360/
Toxin was a poor word choice of mine there.
Link has some light reading on the subject. TLDR, there is evidence of biomagnification in some trophic levels, but the findings are inconclusive.
Again, not the topic being discussed here.
Plants don’t absorb microplastics from the soil, or at least that’s my assumption.
Therefore, if you live near a road, washing your veggies should remove the microplastics that have accumulated in the leaves
Whoaa I didn’t think plants absorbed microplastics but apparently, they do.
Here’s the article I found. And the relevant article it cites.
Fuck me.
God that hurts to read.