WILL+THE+POLLUTION+CONTINUE?

//Brief Summary //
//1,000 miles off the California coast, in an area known as the central North Pacific gyre, there is a floating island of plastic that spans nearly 5 million square miles, roughly the size of the United States plus India combined. Ocean pollution, or marine debris, is one of the biggest threats to our ocean ecosystem, economy, and tourism industry. Plastic makes up the largest percentage of this marine debris: 60-80 percent of all marine debris is plastic. Marine debris affects 267 species worldwide. Animals often eat bits of plastic that they mistake for food, and endure internal injuries, intestinal blockage, and starvation. Birds mistake plastic for nesting material, and sea turtles find their hatching migration blocked by plastic debris. Other animals suffer suffocation, drowning and entanglement, as plastic debris fill up the areas that they call home. This plastic contamination results in severe injuries or death for many animals. Plastic debris also acts as the perfect material on which persistent organic pollutants latch. These pollutants are then able to travel freely around the ocean ecosystem.

Annually, marine debris is growing at an alarming rate. Eighty percent of pollution in the ocean comes from land pollution. Plastic bags are a huge source of this plastic pollution, as is Polystyrene, a type of plastic used in food packaging, such as clear plastic cups and containers. Foamed versions of this plastic, such as expanded polystyrene (EPS) and extruded polystyrene (commonly known as Styrofoam™) are also frequently used. Californians use 165,000 tons of polystyrene each year for packaging food, with no recycling options available. As a non-biodegradable plastic, it lasts for hundreds of years and can float hundreds of miles away from where it was released. In California, 15% of the total volume of litter recovered from storm drains is polystyrene. Finally, cigarette butts constitute a final category of debris. Environment California is supporting three bills this year to regulate and reduce plastic bags pollution, polystyrene, and cigarette butts. //

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 * //Emerging Catastrophe

Since it was first mass produced in the 1950s, plastic has found its way into our oceans. Today, plastic pollution in our seas is a global threat that damages marine ecosystems, harms and kills millions of marine animals, and is poised to affect human health.

The very attributes that make plastic so useful to humans — its durability, light weight and lack of decomposition — are huge liabilities for oceans and ocean life: polymers persist for decades, perhaps even hundreds of years, and 30 percent of plastic is able to float. This combination contributes to an accumulation of plastic in our oceans that is staggering.

In 1992 the EPA found that a majority of beaches around the world had some accumulation of plastic material, such as plastic pellets (from leaking shipping and train containers), plastic drums, polystyrene packaging, polyurethane foam pieces, fishing lines and nets, pens, lighters, tires, toothbrushes, and films (plastic bags). In certain areas there is more plastic in the water by weight than zooplankton. This accounts for reports of a majority of all marine mammals and sea birds to have some amount of plastic in their digestive systems. According to the 2001 Marine Pollution Bulletin, there was six pounds of plastic floating in the North Pacific subtropical gyre for every pound of naturally occurring zooplankton. These results were re-confirmed in 2002.

With its ability to absorb dangerous chemicals, plastic pollution may become a factor in human health. Plastic can absorb toxic non-water-soluble chemicals at extreme levels. Poisons such as POPs (persistent organic pollutants, like DDT and PCBs) and other oily pollutants are absorbed and concentrated by the plastic debris encircling our globe. Once these fragments of plastic break down to such a size that some marine organisms mistake the debris as food, these toxins can be released into their living membranes. As such, these contaminants may be passed up the food web, potentially reaching our dinner plates. In effect, our poisons and debris may come back to us full circle.

The Subtropical Gyres of the World

The five subtropical gyre systems (North Pacific Gyre, South Pacific Gyre, North Atlantic Gyre, South Atlantic Gyre and Indian Ocean Gyre) make up 40 percent of the world’s oceans. These swirling vortexes all contain sizeable amounts of floating plastic debris, and the North Pacific Gyre appears to be most polluted, with an estimated 150 million tons of plastic covering an area the size of Texas. //** []