I’ll Have The Seafood With A Side of Plastic
I remember growing up and my parents teaching me that I should never throw trash on the ground. She never really explained why other than to leave me with the impression that it looks bad when you see trash on the ground. I really wish she had explained the damage trash does to our planet and the impact it has on our health. I genuinely believe that she had no idea. Through most of her life, the only trash her generation had to deal with was paper. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that plastic production began in earnest. Environmental pollution in the form of plastics, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms were non-existent prior to 1950 (Ealy, 2018).
Today, we can buy our beverages in aluminum cans or plastic bottles but prior to 1950, any liquid beverage, whether it was a Coke or milk, was sold in glass bottles. Many of the chemicals used in the production of plastic, pesticides, and artificial food products were left over from weapon manufacturing used in the prior wars (Ealy, 2018). I remember growing up eating margarine. I had no reason to think there was anything wrong with it, I mean, it was for sale in the grocery store. Surely they would be unable to sell a product that could harm us in some way – right? I was horrified to learn that margarine was one molecule away from plastic. I know my parents did the best they could, just like I did when I was raising my own children. You don’t know what you don’t know – right? Until the information has been made public we continue doing what we have always done because we know no better. We trust the companies creating our food products to protect us.
The information is out there now. It is time that we stop using ignorance as an excuse for our poor behavior. The amount of plastic that we throw away, especially individual use plastic, have made their way into the Pacific Ocean, between California and Hawaii, in such quantities that it is now being called, ‘The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This area is double the size of the state of Texas and is estimated to contain more than 79,000 tons, more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, floating in this area. This plastic waste is also making its way into the stomachs of sea life.
Two whales beached themselves along the coast of Germany. Autopsies were conducted and hundreds of pounds of plastic were found in each whales stomach (Ealy, 2018). Hundreds of pounds. Think about that for a minute. Whales are not the only sea life affected by our plastic trash. The ocean has the ability to break down some of these plastics.
It is estimated that the average human throws away at least two pieces of plastic every day. With the world’s population around 7.7 billion in 2019, that means annual plastic use amounts to around 320 million tons. Of this quantity, nearly 60% is less dense than the seawater it is floating in. When plastic ends up floating in the ocean, it can be broken down into smaller pieces, called microplastics, by the action of the waves, temperature changes, the heat from the sun, and it could even loose buoyancy and sink (Lebreton, et.al, 2018). As these microplastics float in or settle on the flora in the ocean, the ocean’s fauna eats them. As a result, the microplastic the fish has eaten ends up on our dinner plate.
Now we know that the plastic we throw out is killing our sea life and it may also be responsible for human health issues. Some research has determined that the human body does have the ability to naturally eliminate up to 90% of the broken down plastics and microplastics that was inside the seafood we eat. However the other 10% can bioaccumulate in our lymphatic and circulatory systems. Considering how much seafood is consumed worldwide, this could amount to tons of microplastics (Eshun & Pobee, 2022).
What do we do? Do we stop eating seafood? Is the health benefits of the seafood worth the risk of eating the microplastics too? Maybe you’re considering switching to ‘farmed’ seafoods. You might think that these fish and seafoods would be safe to eat because the fish are no longer swimming out in the ocean. You would be wrong. Some farmed fish are actually fed paint chips to turn the flesh the color that is deemed most desirable by the consumer. Farmed fish are raised in ocean water which means that even without intent, these fish are consuming microplastics just like the wild seafood in the oceans.
A better idea would be to vote with your dollar and stop buying products packaged in individual use plastic. As long as we continue to demand the ‘convenience’ of disposable products, the more we will continue to contribute to the destruction of our oceans and our ocean life. How will you explain your actions to your children and grandchildren when they ask you what happened to all the fish?
References
Ealy, H. (2018). Avoiding Chemical Endocrine Disruptors PowerPoint Presentation. Retrieved from the Energetic Health Institute website, Living In Holistic Balance, Lesson 3, at https://our.energetichealthinstitute.org/course/1379088191/materials?f=104892135
Eshun, F., & Pobee, A. N. A. (2022). Effects of frying on microplastics load in fish and implications on health. Food Frontiers. Retrieved from Wiley’s Online Library at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fft2.164
Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F. et al. (2018). Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Sci Rep 8, 4666 – Retrieved from the Scientific Reports website at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22939-w
