{"id":2861,"date":"2014-12-12T06:33:15","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T11:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2861"},"modified":"2014-12-12T06:36:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T11:36:33","slug":"full-scale-of-plastic-in-the-worlds-oceans-revealed-for-first-time-environment-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2861","title":{"rendered":"Full scale of plastic in the world&#8217;s oceans revealed for first time | Environment | The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2014\/dec\/10\/full-scale-plastic-worlds-oceans-revealed-first-time-pollution\">Full scale of plastic in the world&#8217;s oceans revealed for first time | Environment | The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\">More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world\u2019s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\">Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25tn plastic particles in the oceans, most of them \u201cmicro plastics\u201d measuring less than 5mm.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\">The volume of plastic pieces, largely deriving from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing, was calculated from data taken from 24 expeditions over a six-year period to 2013. The research,\u00a0<a class=\" u-underline\" style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: #dcdcdc; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; -webkit-transition-delay: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;\" href=\"http:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0111913\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">published in the journal PLOS One<\/a>, is the first study to look at plastics of all sizes in the world\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\">Large pieces of plastic can strangle animals such as seals, while smaller pieces are ingested by fish and then fed up the food chain, all the way to humans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\">This is problematic due to the chemicals contained within plastics, as well as the pollutants that plastic attract once they are in the marine environment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\">\u201cWe saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines,\u201d said Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western Australia. \u201cBut there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\"><!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml>\n <w:WordDocument>\n  <w:Zoom>0<\/w:Zoom>\n  <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0<\/w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>\n  <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0<\/w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>\n  <w:UseMarginsForDrawingGridOrigin\/>\n <\/w:WordDocument>\n<\/xml><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.0pt; font-family: LucidaGrande; color: #282828;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 0px;\"><!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Full scale of plastic in the world&#8217;s oceans revealed for first time | Environment | The Guardian. More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world\u2019s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found. Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1790,1857,638,1215],"class_list":["post-2861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-oceans","tag-plastics","tag-pollution","tag-toxins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2862,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}