Health hazards due to plastic parts in marine fish

With the fish on the table: Plastic waste in the sea lands on our plates again
(aid) - Every year, 30 million tons of plastic land in our oceans, according to the Federal Environment Agency. That's ten percent of annual plastic production. There are plastic garbage whirlpools in the sea, which are as big as Central Europe. The plastic waste is z. For example, torn fishing nets and ropes, plastic bags, bottles and baby diapers. These large parts are rubbed by the wave motion and UV radiation into smaller particles until it is finally microplastics.

Health hazard due to plastic in the seas. Picture: animaflora - fotolia

For the particle size of these particles there is (still) no general definition; but it is, as the name implies, only a few microns to millimeters in size and sometimes only visible under the microscope. It is also believed, however, that microplastics in the sea are heavily polluted by land and can be sourced from many sources, such as the abrasion of car tires or particles of cosmetics. This microplastic can only be filtered out inadequately in the sewage treatment plants.

Sea animals take up microplastics with the food. This starts with plankton and continues through the food chain to big fish. This also applies to fish in front of our "front door" in the North and Baltic Seas. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), together with other research institutes, has recently investigated the impact of herring, mackerel, cod, dab and flounder. Of the 290 fish examined, 5.5 percent were contaminated with plastic. The free-living fish (herring and mackerel) were 10.7% contaminated on average, of the bottom fish (cod, dab and flounder) 3.4%.

Although the major sources of plastic waste in the sea are the Southeast Asian states of China, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, each and every one of us can do something about the plastic flood: reduce disposable packaging, dispose of it as soon as possible, dispose of it properly. In English, this sounds a bit more handy: reduce, reuse, recycle. Rüdiger Lobitz, aid