Death By Plastic

Do you remember this piece of good advice?

http://youtu.be/PSxihhBzCjk

Here's one I didn't see coming - melting Arctic ice will release killer amounts of plastic into the oceans:

Many scientists and activists have raised alarms over the massive amount of plastic waste building up in the world’s oceans. In the film “Midway,” documentary maker Chris Jordan showed how tens of thousands of baby albatrosses are dying – their bodies filled with plastic most likely from the Garbage Patch – on the Pacific atoll of Midway, one of the most remote islands on the planet. 

Increasing ice melt due to climate change will likely release the even-higher concentrations of plastic trapped in Arctic ice into the sea, and thus into the food chain, the new report in Earth’s Future said. 

“The environmental consequences of microplastic fragments are not fully understood, but they are clearly ingested by a wide range of marine organisms including commercially important species,” the report said.

The term “microplastics” refers to tiny particles created as plastic materials that break down but never biodegrade. They are being increasingly found on surface waters and shorelines around the world. 

Plastic materials are introduced to the ocean by various means, including from cosmetic ingredients known as microbeads, from the release of semi-synthetic fibers such as rayon from washing machines, and from larger discarded plastic items. The plastics reach the sea via sewers, rivers, and littering along coastlines or at sea.

Researchers said in the new report that Arctic ice contains such high concentrations of plastics because of the way sea ice forms. It concentrates particulates from the surrounding waters, and the particulates become trapped until the ice melts. Scientists said in the report that they found 38-234 plastic particles per cubic meter of ice in some parts of the Arctic areas they studied.

In the next decade the scientists predict that at least 2,000 trillion cubic meters of Arctic ice will melt. If that ice contains the lowest concentrations of microplastics reported in the study, this could result in the release of more than 1 trillion pieces of plastic, the report said.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/27/arctic-plastics-ice.html

I also suggest that you watch the short trailer from the film Midway. We humans have destroyed this planet, and even if we get CO2 emissions under control all life on the planet is still in great danger of dying out.

http://www.midwayjourney.com/film-trailer/

Update: By the way, some of the radioactive materials floating our way from Fukushima is likely to get caught in the Eastern Garbage Patch. It will no doubt be there for quite a while.