171 trillion plastic particles now float on the world’s oceans
Surface plastic has risen sharply since 2005 and is mostly microplastic, according to 40 years of ocean sampling.
Global
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More than 1,000 rivers carry 80% of plastic into the sea, not just ten
Ocean plastic comes from thousands of small urban rivers, overturning the earlier claim that ten big rivers carry 90% of it.
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19–23 million tonnes of plastic entered rivers, lakes and seas in 2016
Even the most ambitious commitments would leave tens of millions of tonnes of plastic entering aquatic ecosystems every year.
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The ‘credit card of plastic a week’ claim is wrong by about a million times
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)’s viral estimate that people ingest 5 grams of plastic a week was re-analysed and found to be roughly…
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The ‘450 years to degrade’ claim has no source; here is what is measured
The only systematic review of plastic degradation rates found an HDPE bottle would take about 58 years at sea for half of it to…
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Sewage sludge fertiliser leaves farmland with microplastics for decades
A 25-year field study found sludge application raised soil microplastic levels by up to 1,445%, persisting for at least 22 years.
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Plastic touching coral raises disease risk from 4% to 89%
A survey of 124,000 corals across the Asia-Pacific found plastic debris multiplies the chance of coral disease more than twenty-fold.
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‘Plasticosis’: the first disease named after plastic
Seabirds on Lord Howe Island develop scar tissue in their stomachs in proportion to how much plastic they have eaten.
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914 marine species are known to have swallowed or been tangled in plastic
The definitive species count for plastic ingestion and entanglement has more than tripled since 1997.
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A single piece of plastic gives a sea turtle a one-in-five chance of death
Post-mortem data from Queensland, Australia, show that eating just 14 pieces of plastic gives a turtle a 50% chance of dying.