Our Reach Clearly Exceeds Our Grasp

It is to state the obvious that our love of convenience, our addiction to a throwaway lifestyle, is very destructive, not only to us and our immediate environment, but also to distant seas and their inhabitants.

Amy Smart writes:

A pioneering study of seven belugas in Canada’s remote Arctic waters has found microplastics in the innards of every single whale.

Researchers from Ocean Wise worked with hunters from the Inuvialuit community of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., to collect samples from whales they harvested between 2017 and 2018.

They found an average of nearly 10 microplastics, or particles less than five millimetres in size, in the gastrointestinal tracts of each beluga.

Lead author Rhiannon Moore says she wasn’t expecting to see so many microplastics so far north.

“It actually surprised me at first. I thought, this is a far-north top predator in the Arctic in a fairly remote place,” Moore says in an interview.

It demonstrated just how far microplastics can travel and how they’ve penetrated even the most remote environments, she says.

It is believed that the plastics find their way into the whales' systems through their prey, which are riddled with them.

And lest we just think that's too bad for the whales, those microplastics are increasingly found in the very water we drink. Earth Day Network has posted some disturbing facts, including the following:

Microplastics in different forms are present in almost all water systems in the world, be they streams, rivers, lakes, or oceans.

According to a study conducted by Orb Media on plastics and tap water, 83% of tested water samples from major metropolitan areas around the world were contaminated with plastic fibers.

Plastic fibers were also found in bottled water produced by 11 of the world’s largest brands purchased from 19 locations in 9 countries. 93% of bottled water showed some sign of microplastic contamination, including polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

Each year, about 1 million tons of tiny plastic fibers are released into wastewater.

Modern technology has brought us many wonders. It has also unleashed countless horrors, plastic pollution certainly not being the least of them.

Ingesting material with a petrochemical composition is never a good idea, and the price we are paying is becoming increasingly apparent. Clearly, our reach is continuing, at an ever-increasing pace, to exceed our grasp of the consequences.