Degrading our planet, one nanoparticle at a time
This year, India and the United Nations (UN) are jointly hosting the global World Environment Day celebrations, with ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’ as the central theme. There is no reason to celebrate, really. Recently there was alarming news of how we are ingesting plastic nanoparticles in the food that makes it to our tables. It’s time to fix the problem but where do we even begin?
Curated By: Madhu Kapparath
Replace the ducks with plastic flotsam and you get the drift. We all have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic floating trash larger than the size of the US, discovered around 1985. Current research from Scientific Reports, collating data from multi-vessel surveys, show 80,000 tonnes of plastic floating inside an area of 1.6 million sq.km in North Pacific Ocean. Atleast 46 percent of the trash is comprised of fishing nets. “The term ‘garbage patch’ is misleading”, Angelicque White, Associate Professor at Oregon State University was quoted as saying, “because it is not visible from space; there are no islands of trash; it is more akin to a diffuse soup of plastic”.
