There is no pure land? Deep ocean is also arranged by micro-plastics? part one

Since the invention of plastics, it has brought great convenience to people's lives. At the same time, its adverse effects on the environment and ecology have become increasingly prominent. In the many ocean and polar scientific examinations carried out in recent years in China, micro-plastics in the ocean have been detected. 

What is marine microplastics? What is the harm? How to prevent and manage?

At the beginning of this year, Sun Chengjun, a researcher at the First Institute of Oceanography of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and other people in the Antarctic Powell Basin conducted a scientific investigation. A 500-liter surface seawater sample was taken by a ship-borne pump, and the filter formed by filtering the seawater was observed with a microscope. There are five or six microplastics less than 0.3 mm.

It is small in size and often difficult to distinguish with the naked eye.

British researchers published a paper on plastic debris in marine waters and sediments in Science in 2004. For the first time, the concept of microplastics was used to refer to plastic fragments less than 5 mm in diameter.

Like large plastics, marine microplastics have a negative impact on the Earth's ecology and environment.

“They themselves contain plasticizers and can absorb toxic and harmful substances from the environment. When they are ingested by marine organisms such as seabirds, fish, benthic animals, zooplankton, etc., they can damage the digestive tract of marine organisms or stimulate them. The gastrointestinal tissue produces a sense of fullness and stops eating. The toxic and harmful substances carried by it can also adversely affect marine life," said Wang Juying, deputy director of the National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center.

It is understood that in 2015, the United Nations Joint Expert Group on Scientific Issues in Marine Environmental Protection equated marine microplastics with marine organisms to the same extent as large marine plastic waste.

"There has not been research to directly prove that marine micro-plastics are harmful to the human body. However, plastics often break down and break down after several hundred years. If they are allowed to accumulate, release and pollute, they will have an increasing impact." Sun Chengjun believes One of the purposes of studying marine microplastics is to explore its impact on marine ecology and the environment, especially on marine life, and whether it will have adverse effects on humans.

Perhaps, many people think that microplastics are not related to their own lives. Actually it is not. Microplastics are plastic particles with small particle sizes (less than 5 microns in diameter) and textile fibers that are thinner than the tip of a needle and can exist in the marine environment for hundreds or even thousands of years. Sounds a bit strange, right?

In fact, it exists in our daily life, a variety of plastic products, such as polyethylene, polystyrene ... made of daily necessities, when they are discarded in the garbage bin, this is actually they The first stop of the global tour.

After experiencing the sun and rain, the cold winter sun, they are more "exquisite" polished by nature, slowly turned into particles, turned into a "micro-plastic" that is smaller than the particles, riding the waves of the rivers and lakes, they Eventually remitted to the ocean and opened the "global travel". The fish, shrimps and crabs that live in the ocean have never seen such high-level "food" because their ancestors have never seen them. They use micro-plastics as food, but they don't know these micro-plastics that look like food. It can be fatal!

Micro-plastics can be eaten into the stomach, but they can't be digested, so they can only accumulate day after day, year after year, until one day, other higher-level predators ate the micro-plastic “master”. "They accumulate again in the stomach of this new owner."