Name: 3 Unexpected Effects of Plastic Pollution
Uploaded: 2020-04-23T03:31:29.000Z
Duration: 5 min 53 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

Plastic as we know it has only been widely used

Basic passive voice

since Tupperware was invented in the 1940s,

but now it's nearly impossible to go a day without it.

plastic also causes some serious problems.

You've heard about these things, turtles caught in six-pack rings,

and beaches with more plastic debris than sand.

some consequences of plastic pollution might still surprise you.

For one, plastics can emit greenhouse gases forever—

not just during the making and disposing of them.

Plastic is basically just a long chain of molecules,

UV radiation starts to break that chain down into smaller molecules

like methane and ethylene, in a process called off-gassing.

but methane is especially bad because it's 25 times better

at trapping heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

And as plastic breaks down, the problem actually gets worse, not better.

there's a huge increase in the release of gases.

For example, a common plastic called LDPE, or low-density polyethylene,

releases methane 488 times faster in a powdered form than in pellet form.

That's because those first broken bonds make the rest of the plastic more brittle,

so it more easily breaks down on its own.

Over time, it keeps breaking into smaller and smaller,

And as it does, it releases greenhouse gases into the air.

Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story.

These indestructible pieces of plastic are also contributing to another modern problem:

scientists collected bacteria from plastic found along the Irish coastline

and tried to kill them with 10 commonly used antibiotics.

...which turned out to be surprisingly hard to do.

98% of the bacteria were resistant to ampicillin,

one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics for things like sinus and ear infections.

And 16% of the bacteria were resistant to minocycline,

Unfortunately, plastic is a great breeding ground for bacteria,

because they will grow on any available surface in the ocean.

And many antibiotic-resistant bacteria are already out there—

plastics just give them more places to flourish.

Once again, the problem gets worse as plastics break down,

because they create even more surface area for bacteria to colonize.

And these bacteria don't just stay way out in the ocean.

The same study showed that ocean currents

can carry plastic covered in bacteria back into coastal waterways,

where different species could ingest them.

Unfortunately, another 2020 study found that bacterial growth on marine plastics

actually makes these plastics smell like food to sea turtles.

because it smells good rather than because it looks like food.

Ingesting plastic covered in antibiotic-resistant bacteria

could create health problems for marine animals—

and also for creatures higher up the food chain, including us.

it breaks into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces,

and some of the smallest plastics may be capable of doing the most harm.

Any plastic that's smaller than a few micrometers is called a nanoparticle,

and research has found that these microscopic particles

can even pass through biological barriers, such as cell membranes.

That means they can enter the bloodstream of animals,

pass through the gut lining, and penetrate tissues.

Plastic nanoparticles have even been found to penetrate the blood-brain barrier,

a layer of cells that filter harmful substances

out of the blood so they can't get into the brain.

This seems to be dangerous no matter where you are on the food chain.

researchers exposed a zooplankton called Daphnia magna

and scientists found that, while the larger particles didn't seem to affect them,

Next, to see the effect of the nanoparticles higher up in the food chain,

they exposed a group of Daphnia to the plastic nanoparticles again,

and then fed them to some fish called Crucian carp.

Over the next two months, the carp started to change:

They swam slower, explored less of their environment,

and lost more weight than the control group.

When the researchers analyzed their brains,

they found the 53-nanometer particles they had fed to the Daphnia—

And they think these invisible particles changed the carp's behavior.

These findings show that plastic nanoparticles can move up the food chain—

and interfere with the natural function of an ecosystem.

And if we ate fish that had ingested nanoparticles,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

3 Unexpected Effects of Plastic Pollution

process

interfere

consume

bacteria