As you know this very tiny particles come from plastic water bottles and food packaging or wrapping that have been broken down or degraded.
But they are also from washing process of synthetic clothing and from microbeads that are intentionally added to cosmetics, cleaning and personal care products like body soaps and toothpastes.
These microplastics are traveling in the air and sneaking into our body.
A new study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology published on 5 June says it’s possible that human eats microplastics anywhere from 39,000 to 52,000 a year and breathes more than 74,000.
It took the data from 26 previous studies that measure the amounts of microplastic particles in fish, shellfish, sugar, salt, beer and water, as well as in the air in cities.
A research conducted in drinking water found people who drink tap water ingest additional 4,000 plastic particles annually, while bottled water containing 22 times more microplastics than tap water on average which is around 90,000 additionally.
Most drinks and foods such as bread, dairy, processed products have not been tested and may well contain just as much plastic, said Kieran Cox, at the University of Victoria in Canada who led the research. It is scary to think that these numbers are likely underestimated.
Another new study revealed on 12 June, commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and carried out by the microplastics research team at University of Newcastle, Australia, have found that people are consuming about 2,000 tiny pieces of plastic each week that could be as high as 5 grams per person.
This amount is the equivalent of eating a teaspoon of plastic or a credit card every week.
The pollution that microplastics cause is getting worse and worse day by day.
It is harming marine life and may be having a profound impact on our health.
Now is the time when each of us should try to live a lifestyle where we don’t need to rely on plastic for future generations to come.
