The dangers of microplastics in your food
Every day, you lift up a fork, take a big bite, and enjoy thousands of pieces of plastic. Researchers from the Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, in just 20 minutes you could have eaten as much as 114 pieces of plastic with your meal.
Plastic is everywhere. Small particles of plastic have made their way to the deepest and farthest corners of the world, from the Mariana Trench to Antarctica. Plastic has even made it to islands where there are no human residence, and animals are dying from it daily due to plastic washing up on their shores and then being eaten.
This is a big concern for several reasons. Apart from the incredible amount of plastic on our planet, plastic is getting consumed by small animals such as plankton, that is then getting passed up the food chain to humans.
Ingesting plastic might not seem like a big deal as long as we don't choke on it or get a blockage, but plastic has a terrible side effect of absorbing toxins surrounding it. These can then be absorbed by your system as it moves through the digestion system.
Not enough research has been done to find out how eating plastic effects humans, but we know this is bad news for animals. Scientists discovered that whales who have washed up dead or dying on the beach have high levels of toxins from plastics in their body, and fish experience lower reproductive rates the more toxins from plastics are in the body.
This is especially concerning in fish because we tend to eat the fish that prey on other fish, which pass the toxins all the way up the food chain.
It's not yet known how much plastic toxins effect human health, but it is a big concern. The only way to start getting a handle on microplastics is to “turn off the tap” and stop putting so much of it into the environment. Even then, it will be very difficult to clean it up enough to not suffer from these microplastics.
https://wellness-trends.com/do-you-know-how-much-plastic-we-eat-every-day-with-food/health/
