Acknowledgement on plastic - a new and powerful enemy of the environment
Answers
Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic products in the environment which affects the wildlife, humans, and their habitats adversely.
Plastics are also known to affect the land, waterways, and oceans unfavorably.
All living organisms including marine animals can be affected adversely due to direct ingestion of plastic waste, entanglement, exposure to chemicals from plastics etc. which cause biological disturbances in organisms.
In humans, plastics are known to cause disruption of hormone levels especially the thyroid hormone.
Chlorinated plastic is known to release harmful chemicals into the environment which seep into the ground water sources and ecosystem and can cause deleterious effects when that water is consumed.
Nurdles are the plastic pellets that are used for manufacturing plastic products and they are shipped by cargo ships. When spilled into the oceans, they litter the beaches and release toxic chemicals like polystyrene and bisphenol A in the waters.
Plastic litter has toxins like diethylhexyl phthalate, cadmium, and mercury, which are toxic carcinogens. These toxins get distributed in the food chain as the fish might consume the water that is contaminated with these chemicals and when the humans consume the fish, the toxins enter the human body too.
This weightless material have lots of uses in our life, But another aspect we do not know of is that plastic is a danger to us and our environment as:
The chemicals applied on plastic to treat it get absorbed by us and can cause many problems including cancer.
This plastic as a debris when reach sea and eaten by marine life thus poisoning them.
Plastic underground can leach the chemicals to the ground that can reach the under water reservoir thus poisoning it.