Plastic pollution is choking the life out of our oceans

The amount of industrial and domestic plastics being dumped into our oceans has reached it's highest ever levels. An estimated 8 million tonnes is dumped into the sea every year, damaging biodiversity and affecting human health.

Plastic bags, bottles, fishing wire and cigarette butts are the worst offenders, floating out to sea and photodegrading into micro-plastics in the middle of the oceans. It has now been estimated there are more micro-plastics in the oceans than stars in the milky-way.

These microplastics are consumed by sea creatures because of their resemblance to food, which then leads to their death. Micro-plastics can also accumulate in the food chains as larger animals consume smaller ones, leading to a bioaccumulation of plastic throughout.Larger items like plastic bags are also eaten by sea creatures, especially turtles who mistake them for their favourite food, jellyfish. This creates an imbalance in the food chain and disrupts natures natural systems.

Plastic pollution on New Brighton beach

Even in the UK, many of our beaches are now covered with plastic washed up from the sea at high tide showing the extent of both local and global pollution. Beaches and seas are becoming our dumping grounds for the excess plastics we produce and this is will come back to haunt us.Everything, all life on earth the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere are all connected, it is our duty to protect them.

Plastic pollution is not only dangerous because of the damage to biodiversity; the creation of plastics gives off harmful chemicals which continue to be released throughout the products life cycle. These chemicals, mainly dioxins and PCBs, are endocrine disruptors and unsettle the natural estrogen cycle in animals and humans.

This can lead to cancers, tumours and has been linked to the rise in type-2diabetes, autism and affect the fertility of foetuses in the womb by interfering with testosterone. The CDC in the USA found 95% of urine samples contain some amount of BPA.

Plastic pollution is now at epidemic levels, destroying life on earth, poisoning us and our oceans; although we are the problem we are also the solution to this problem and if we all act now we can reverse the damage we have done.