yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Are Microplastics in Our Water Becoming a Macroproblem? | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] It was completely legal to dump plastic in the ocean until the '90s, and a lot of that plastic is still there because plastic lasts out there for a very long time. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller [Music] pieces. We know that over 300 species of wildlife have ingested this material. It's been reported in animals, and so as it is eaten by animals, it actually can move up the food web.

As the scientific literature on this issue increases, literally almost every habitat they've gone to — sea mounts, Arctic Ice, coral reefs, deep sea — it's become ubiquitous. I don't think anybody would fight anyone on an argument that plastic debris has not become a contaminant of concern. We're collecting the samples by using a manta troll. It's basically a big metal box with wings; it looks like a manta with a very long, about 12T mesh net off the back.

1, 2, 3, Splat! At the end is a piece we can take off that has collected all of the solids. You rinse it all out, filter it through another strainer, and then put it into a jar. This caught a lot of other stuff. If you want to take a look at what we're rinsing out of the screen, it's more tiny [Music] plastic.

What we're concerned about ultimately is what are the implications of trash going into the water, getting into the food we harvest, and we're still connecting the dots there a bit. We know that lots of trash goes out into the water. We know that the sun and waves break it down into small pieces. We know that many, many, many species of animals eat it, and we also know that bigger animals eat smaller animals.

We also know that we eat those big trophy fish, and so what we're really trying to figure out is how big a vector plastic is for transporting chemicals into the tissues of the animals that we eat every day. That's a big problem, much bigger than big chunks floating out into the ocean. We don't know exactly what that plastic is; we don't know where exactly it's coming from.

If we're trying to find policy and educational solutions to it, we need to know what we're targeting. We can't just ban plastic; that's not going to work. What kind of plastic is it, and what's the best policy route to reduce it? Is it a ban? Is it a fee? Is it market change? Is it education and behavior change work? What's the best way to tackle it? Until we know exactly what we're dealing with, we're not going to be able to design the right programs to address it.

More Articles

View All
Cannon Shock Waves in Ultra Slow Motion - Smarter Every Day 200
Hey, it’s me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Everyday. Today, we’re in rural Tennessee for an actual artillery competition. And if you learn anything from this truck that’s coming up behind me, this is pretty legit. There’s dudes from all over the country…
Classifying shapes by lines and angles | Math | 4th grade | Khan Academy
Which shape matches all three clues? So here we have three clues, and we want to see which shape down below matches all three of these statements. So let’s start with the first clue. The first clue says the shape is a quadrilateral; “quad” meaning four-s…
7 Stoic principles to MASTER THE ART OF NOT CARING AND LETTING GO | Stoicism
STOICISM INSIGHTS Presents “7 Stoic principles to MASTER THE ART OF NOT CARING AND LETTING GO.” Listen up, fellow STOICS of the digital age. You’ve stumbled upon a golden treasure. And no, I’m not talking about the latest viral video or meme. If you’ve e…
Politicians Are Ripping You Off.
In late 2023, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and her venture capitalist husband made a significant investment in Nvidia, a company known for its work in artificial intelligence and semiconductors, and also known for being the S&P 500’s best performing sto…
Battle on the Tundra (Deleted Scene) | Life Below Zero
He’ll, there ain’t no beavers! That is a big kill, guys. I didn’t get to this set; I got tied up doing some other things. The weather got cold, everything froze right back to the full thickness of the ice, and I didn’t want to leave these snares in there.…
The 4 things it takes to be an expert
Do you bring this trick out at parties? Oh no. It’s a terrible party trick. Here we go. 3.141592653589793 This is Grant Gussman. He watched an old video of mine about how we think that there are two systems of thought. System two is the conscious slow e…