{"id":64641,"date":"2023-01-05T08:15:31","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T13:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64641"},"modified":"2023-01-05T08:15:31","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T13:15:31","slug":"how-microplastics-are-infiltrating-the-food-you-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64641","title":{"rendered":"How microplastics are infiltrating the food you eat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How microplastics are infiltrating the food you eat<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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(Image credit:\u00a0Nailia Schwarz\/Alamy)<\/div>\n
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Plastic pollution is one of the defining legacies of our modern way of life, but it is now so widespread it is even finding its way into fruit and vegetables as they grow.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Microplastics have infiltrated every part of the planet. They have been found buried\u00a0in Antarctic sea ice<\/a>, within the\u00a0guts of marine animals inhabiting the deepest ocean trenches<\/a>, and in\u00a0drinking water around the world<\/a>. Plastic pollution has been found on\u00a0beaches of remote, uninhabited islands<\/a>\u00a0and it shows up in\u00a0sea water samples<\/a>\u00a0across the planet. One study estimated that there are around\u00a024.4 trillion fragments of microplastics<\/a>\u00a0in the upper regions of the world’s oceans.<\/p>\n

But they aren’t just ubiquitous in water \u2013 they are spread widely in soils on land too and can even end up in the food we eat. Unwittingly, we may be consuming tiny fragments of plastic with almost every bite we take.<\/p>\n

In 2022,\u00a0analysis by the Environmental Working Group<\/a>, an environmental non-profit, found that sewage sludge has contaminated almost 20 million acres (80,937sq km) of US cropland with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called “forever chemicals”, which are commonly found in plastic products and do not break down under normal environmental conditions.<\/p>\n

Sewage sludge is the byproduct left behind after municipal wastewater is cleaned. As it is expensive to dispose of and rich in nutrients, sludge is commonly used as\u00a0organic\u00a0<\/a>fertiliser<\/a>\u00a0in the US and Europe<\/a>. In the latter, this is in part due to\u00a0EU directives promoting a circular waste economy<\/a>. An estimated\u00a08-10 million tonnes of sewage sludge<\/a>\u00a0is produced in Europe each year, and roughly 40% of this is spread on farmland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How microplastics are infiltrating the food you eat (Image credit:\u00a0Nailia Schwarz\/Alamy) Plastic pollution is one of the defining legacies of our modern way of life, but it is now so widespread it is even finding its way into fruit and vegetables as they grow. Microplastics have infiltrated every part of the planet. They have been […]<\/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":[31167,319,33560,7402,5621],"class_list":["post-64641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-bbc-news","tag-food","tag-isabelle-gerretsen","tag-microplastics","tag-sewage-sludge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64641","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=64641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64642,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64641\/revisions\/64642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}