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BOB HIRSHON (host):
Tallying tons of ocean plastic. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
From the single-use packages and utensils we throw away, to fishing nets lost at sea, humans put huge amounts of plastic into the oceans. How much? Well, marine scientist Marcus Eriksen and his colleagues report in the journal PLoS ONE that just the plastic floating on the ocean surface tops 270,000 metric tons, most of it in the form of tiny microplastic particles that filter feeding marine animals consume.
MARCUS ERIKSEN (Five Gyres Institute):
Plastic’s a great sponge for similar hydrocarbons, like industrial chemicals, PCBs, pesticides, DDT; it’s almost like microplastics are delivery systems for toxins to enter marine food webs.
HIRSHON:
Eriksen says that solving the problem will require managing plastics from manufacture to the end of their lives—to ensure they don’t add to the islands of plastic already in our waters. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.