Microplastics in gut contents of coastal freshwater fish from Río de la Plata estuary
Plastic contaminates everything, even your implant.
The plastic breaks but does not degrade.
The microplastic becomes nano plastic, which breaks and becomes picoplastic which breaks and becomes femtoplastic and so on.
June 2017 Marine Pollution Bulletin 122(1-2) DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.06.007
The presence of microplastics (MPs) in gut contents of coastal freshwater fish of the Rio de la Plata estuary was studied. Samples were taken in six sites where 87 fish belonging to 11 species and four feeding habits were captured. Presence of MPs was verified in the 100% of fish. The fibres represented the 96% of MPs found. The number of MPs in gut contents was significantly higher close to sewage discharge. There was not found relationship between number of MPs and fish length, weight or feeding habit. The spatial differences in mean number of MPs in fish observed in this study, suggest that environmental availability of MPs could be of great importance to explain the differences found among sampling sites analysed. This work represents the first study about the interaction between MPs and aquatic organisms in this important estuarine ecosystem of South America.
Forget diamonds--plastic is forever. It takes decades, or even centuries, for plastic to break down, and nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists in some form today. We've known for a while that big pieces of plastic can harm wildlife--think of seabirds stuck in plastic six-pack rings--but in more recent years, scientists have discovered microscopic bits of plastic in the water, soil, and even the atmosphere. To learn how these microplastics have built up over the past century, researchers examined the guts of freshwater fish preserved in museum collections; they found that fish have been swallowing microplastics since the 1950s and that the concentration of microplastics in their guts has increased over time.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/fm-fhb042921.php
