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Fish are eating lots of plastic

washingtonpost.com

51–60 of 119 posts

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#51
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catholics don't consider fish meat. I'm not sure what they think it is, maybe some sort of creepily mobile mushroom?

And some Buddhist and Hindu sects consider mushrooms to be meat.

Ironically enough, fungi and animals separated later in the tree of life than plants. So, while certainly not correct, there is a kernel of truth there.

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#52
post #11

Prediction: evolution will solve what humans are incapable of. That means species of fish evolving that specializes in eating plastic. Kinda makes sense. While plastic isn't bio-degradeable in the normal sense, perhaps the digestive system of a specialized fish will succeed. After all there is an abundance.

[deleted]

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#53

Bioaccumulation is a serious thing. I suspect increase of plastic in fish might be related to the reduction in sperm count in men.[0][1] [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-semen-quality... [1] http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-plasti...

Per capita fish consumption is not radically different between East Asian and Europe/USA [0], while sperm count is.

https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/fus/fus99/per_capita99.pdf

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#54

I really wish plastics were recycled/reused a lot more, because they are such ideal materials --- being rather unreactive, flexible, resilient, and (in the case of thermoplastics, which make up the bulk of this waste) easily reprocessed. Although the throwaway culture and low cost means that a lot of it doesn't, I wonder if in the future, if the prices go up in following petroleum trends, "mining" for plastics would…

I'm sort of banking on that. I expect our landfills will be mined by junkers. There is a lot of rare earth elements, metals, and plastics that won't biodegrade very quickly. Little snake bots tunneling through could pick them all up. It's all a matter of need, we'll deplete the finite resources soon.

They don't biodegrade quickly, but they quickly become brittle and turn into a bunch of flakes mixed with dirt and everything else in the junk pile.

Also, "mined by junkers" isn't a very sustainable approach. There are only so many junkers and that number is reducing as society standards increase and they have better ways of making a living than hauling bottles to recycling centers.

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that "meat" is sometimes used in casual English as "Animal muscle/meat, but not fish" I think there's a slight conceptual divide on both the hard-carnivore-against-fish and pescatarian groups. Old world traditions tend to distinguish them separately as well.

True, but it's just stupid, fish are animals.

I know you're being flippant, but we'd lose a lot of what makes language beautiful if we beat the looseness and poetry out of conversational exchanges. Pendatic assertions often miss the fact that words drift in an ever-shifting consensus.

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#56
No fucking shit, captain WaPo. VICE has been talking about this, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the gyres for years. It is also a virtual certainty there is plastic on every beach in the world, even the remotest islands. That's how bad macroplastic garbage and microplastics have become. Maybe we shouldn't have microplastic cosmetics and shouldn't let garbage flow out to the ocean?

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#57
Hardly a word about reducing production and consumption.

There's no mystery where the plastic is coming from -- us. We can live without it, certainly with a lot less of it.

While we wait for legislation, at least on a personal level we can take responsibility for our externalities and reduce our personal consumption.

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#58
How much plastic in fish flesh compared to say leaching into a bottle of water or dust from plastic clothing? Which fish are worst, where is tuna on this list? By what mechanism is fish liver function effected and will this translate to humans?

It goes without saying we should avoid dumping plastic in the sea, but we have no information how harmful fish twice per week is really.

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#59
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called a bacterium. Why not create an actual bacterium to break plastic down like everything else in the environment? It's not really that hard--high school students have done it before. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-plastic-eati... Bonus points if you can make the bacterium specific to particular kinds of plastic.

Well, you need to figure out an economically viable method of producing these bacteria in the quantities necessary and the perform research on the impact that these bacteria will have on the environment…

That's a far easier problem than producing a "nanorobot".

Re: Fish are eating lots of plastic

#60
post #34

We buy lots of cheap plastic made of carbon oil co2 emissions. Then we throw the plastic waste into the oceans. Plastic has weak estrogen hormone disturbance in them from BPA. Then we humans eat the fish and thus gets the estrogen from BPA. This is bound to have human reproduction issues down the line. http://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors/plastic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

Children of Men/Fish
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