Researchers from the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Tasmania examined the stomachs of flesh-footed shearwaters from Lord Howe Island, Australia, where chicks are routinely fed plastic by their parents.
They found fibrosis, the build-up of scar tissue, that increased in proportion to the amount of plastic in the bird's stomach. The scarring damaged the glands that produce digestive juices and the stomach's structure, likely affecting the birds' ability to digest food and fight infection. They named the condition 'plasticosis', the first disease defined specifically by plastic exposure.
The study matters because it moves beyond counting plastic in animals to documenting a specific, dose-dependent tissue injury caused by it.
It describes one species at one site; whether other species or humans develop similar scarring is unknown.