The Health of our Fish and Our Bodies in Jeopardy

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