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Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#21

Post by alehul »

erikig wrote: post #11

Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).

While I understand the comparison you're trying to make, I'm not sure weight is the best estimation here. A whale can be heavier without being larger. While the whale may weigh 1000x more, it appears to be only around 10x as big (sperm whales are 40 feet long, and somewhat wider than humans).

If you take a look at the picture in the article, and analyze what it had ingested: "115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops," it seems much less trivial than a teenager ingesting a teaspoon.

A better comparison would be that, size-wise, it is the same as a teenager ingesting 2.5 plastic bags, 15 drinking cups; that alone seems like enough to cause serious health issues.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#22

Post by ericdykstra »

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia)

Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia)

Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia)

Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia)

Nile - Mediterranean (Africa)

Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia)

Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia)

Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia)

Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa)

Mekong - South China Sea (Asia)

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#23

Post by _red »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #9
ryanmercer wrote: post #2

We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me,…

I say all of this as a thought experiment. But: > Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. I mean, if we're making mental jumps to wiping out billions of people - I'd argue that, does it even matter? Ie, in your example human life largely doesn't matter. Human survival maybe, but clearly not billions of lives. I'm not saying this negatively either, just acknowledging what topic…

One of the results of "loss of god / religion" (I'm not religious, just saying) is that humans have replaced those myths with "science and nature".

So, its perfectly congruent for true believers to advocate the death of billions if their god is being threatened. No different then fire and brimstone of old testament.

Strangely many such people are proclaimed atheist who don't recognize they have just selected a different mythological system to follow.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#24

Post by johnydepp »

Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there.

Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of environment doesn't get much attention. That's why have poor plastic management.

Educating people about these issues will take decades (& it will be too late). Only way forward could be if some constant external pressure is put on their governments using agreements/accords (like Paris Agreement) and some system is setup which will monitor issues like plastic management and carbon-emission. If countries are not following some standard they should be penalized.

Countries like US, Canada, Germany can take initiatives in doing so. Its not only about their carbon-emission & plastic-management, its about the whole planet.

Developing countries should be pressurized(!!) for reducing their population as well. In India, from past 2 decades, no government had an agenda to control population (which is the root of all the problems here). With some external pressure this could also be done I guess.

And most importantly, large & impactful countries like US and China shouldn't waste their time on petty issues like trade-war & focus on big issue here!

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#25

Post by ryanmercer »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #18
erikig wrote: post #11

Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).

Agreed, it seemed a trivial quantity for such a large animal.

>Agreed, it seemed a trivial quantity for such a large animal.

Go swallow 6 grams of plastic. Let me know how that works out for you.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#26

Post by VBprogrammer »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #18
erikig wrote: post #11

Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).

Agreed, it seemed a trivial quantity for such a large animal.

It's a very good point and I'm glad the parent raised it. But wouldn't you find it distressing if teenagers were regularly found with a teaspoon full of plastic in their stomachs?

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#27

Post by jweir »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #17
dawhizkid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you saying...? that whatever toxicity of ingesting plastic is proportional across all living things by weight?

Generally we measure how lethal something is by using an LD 50 that looks at mass of chemical per mass of body. There are exceptions to this, but as a first assumption it seems reasonable.

You are a moron.

If you cut open your stomach and found a measurable amount of plastic you would known something was terribly wrong with your environment.

You shouldn't have plastic in your stomach.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#28

Post by ninkendo »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

How much of that plastic is shipped there "for recycling" by other countries? Everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate we send tons of plastic to places that we know aren't really going to recycle it.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#29

Post by admn2 »

ericdykstra wrote: post #22

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

Feels like such a helpless situation. Is there anything to be done in the US to help with these rivers?

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#30

Post by 0xffff2 »

ryanmercer wrote: post #2

We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me,…

I broadly agree, but I think you should drop the whole notion of killing any significant portion of the human race from your rant. It’s not going to happen and it only serves to distract from a necessary conversation.
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