Now, more than ever plastics and toxins that are harmful to
our health are contaminating the seafood we eat. For a long time it has been
known that fish have been exposed to toxic chemicals in rivers and oceans the
most wide spread being Mercury but garbage floating around is just as bad for us.
"The ocean is basically a
toilet bowl for all of our chemical pollutants and waste in general," says
Chelsea
Rochman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California,
Davis. "Eventually, we start to see those contaminants high up in the food
chain, in seafood and wildlife." The problem
of these toxins and garbage being present in the environment the fish live in
is not only for the health of the fish but when the fish eat the plastic
and we eat the fish, we are taking in harmful plastics and toxins from those
plastics. "Plastics — when they end up in the ocean — are a sponge for
chemicals already out there," says Rochman. "We found that when the
plastic interacts with the juices in the [fish's] stomach, the chemicals come
off of plastic and are transferred into the bloodstream or tissue." The
fish on the marine plastic diet were also more likely to have tumors and liver
problems. There is a lot of plastic floating around in the oceans where our
food comes from. This is an awful problem, which will increasingly become a
problem for both the fish and the humans who eat the fish. The Environmental
Protection Agency does put out advisories
to warn consumers when fish get contaminated with chemicals in local U.S.
waters. But a lot of our seafood now comes from foreign waters, which the EPA
does not monitor. Just a tiny fraction
of imported fish get tested for contaminants.
Citation:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/12/12/250438904/how-plastic-in-the-ocean-is-contaminating-your-seafood
