Unseen and Floating Out to Sea: How Microplastics in Fish Affect You
When looking out to the ocean the last thing you may be thinking about is microscopic decomposed plastic being eaten by fish and eventually landing on your kitchen table. Microplastics are created from a variety of sources, but mainly from larger plastic debris that have been broken down into smaller pieces. Microplastics are miniscule and range from 5 millimeters to just 100 nanometers.
Microplastic contamination can occur anywhere, and often mistakenly gets ingested by animals. According to a study by Qamar Schuyler of the University of Queensland, and published in Global Change Biology, more than half of sea turtles have ingested some form of plastic, including floating plastic bags they mistake for jellyfish. But it’s not just sea turtles Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of Toronto, states, “It absolutely does contaminate every level of the food chain.” Rochman went to publish a paper that found one in four fish purchased from fish markets in Indonesia and the U.S. had man-made debris, including plastic or microfibers, in their intestines.
Now you may be wondering, are there microplastics in the sea fish that you buy and bring home to your family? The answer is absolutely yes. At the very bottom of the food chain zooplankton ingest small pieces of plastic. These zooplankton are microscopic organisms that are eaten by all kinds of fish and marine animals. The microplastics in the fish and marine animals build up as they eat more zooplankton and other small fish that are contaminated. This builds and builds as we move up the food chain to predators, including humans.
There are several ways that these microplastics affect the fish and marine animals that contaminate them. The first is by blocking a creature’s digestive tract, thereby diminishing the urge to eat. This ultimately alters the feeding behavior of the creature and decreases growth and reproductive output. The microplastics also fill the stomachs of fish, leading to starvation in some cases. Another way that microplastics contamination affects creatures is chemically. The microplastics in water often leach other pollutants into water such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), both of which tend to adhere to their surfaces. In fact, an experiment at the San Diego Bay done by Chelsea Rochman showed that the fish that had ingested these pollutants suffered liver damage. Another experiment demonstrated that microplastics in water cause oysters to produce fewer eggs and less motile sperm.
This all leads to the question, should you be worried? Scientists aren’t sure. A research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Christopher Pearce, states, “We really don’t know what the human health impacts of eating microplastic particles are. This is still new science and there’s a lot of work to be done here.” He goes on to say that the health benefits of eating seafood, such as reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, probably outweigh the risks from microplastics. He says, “You’re probably breathing in a lot more microplastic particles right now than you would get in a shellfish.” A report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization concludes that people likely consume only negligible amounts of microplastics.
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