Is salt even safe to cook with? Scientists have recently discovered micro-plastics in salt that has been sold in supermarkets all across China. They have found even larger amounts of plastic bits in sea salt and shellfish.
In 2011, clothes made of nylon showed scientists that pieces of plastic were shedding off of the clothes. When these clothes went in the washer machine the little pieces of plastic were rinsed off in the water and flushed back down in to the ocean. This causes the pieces of plastic to not only contaminate the water but the marine life as well. There have been cases of even finding plastic in the air.
Lance Yonkos is an aquatic toxologist the University of Maryland. He studies chemicals and the affect they can have with the life of aquatic animals. Yonkos expresses his frustration with the consequences following human activity. He implies that the we now have a challenge to face after trusting the ocean to take care of our waste for years.
Adults are supposed to have around 5 grams of salt each day. However, most people eat more than that. Studies show that with the amount of salt consumed, people on average would be ingesting over 1,000 plastic particles a year. This number would only dramatically increase if you were to include all the salt you would get from Chinese shellfish. Try consuming over 100,000 particles of plastic!
The plastic contamination was most likely from when the salt was mine, milled, or packaged. Unfortunately scientist don’t know exactly were the contamination came from. Not only is consuming plastic not good for you, it can actually be pretty bad. Plastic can absorb other chemicals like hydrocarbons, pesticides and other solvents in to your daily diet. Even though this hasn’t been classified as a big problem, it can’t be ruled out yet. I hope teams continue to research this problem and to find a solution to it. I am not trying to gain weight in Chinese plastic and become a giant action figure!
Great blog! It seems like Andrew’s typical research studies he gave us in class. This blog included credible sources, data, and facts, as well as some sarcasm and jokes. By being an interesting topic, or at least for me because personally I hadn’t heard about it before, it automatically attracts the readers attention, and you did a good job keeping it that way by staying relevant and interesting. I wanted to know if I was also in danger of this problem within my environment and that helped keep me engaged with your blog. It seems that the mechanism you explained in your blog about how plastic can absorb other chemicals like hydrocarbons, pesticides and other solvents in your daily diet is plausible. And I also remember reading in one of Andrew’s studies that he’d showed us where it said that the levels of a certain chemical when you consumed BPA products rose over 1200% but still there wasn’t any hard evidence that this created some serious problems because it appeared that those levels quickly declined after abstaining the use of these products.
Your last statement made me giggle. I think it is completely scary that we now have to worry about accidentally eating plastic, but I am sad that it was again another thing the human race has done to inflict pain upon ourselves as well as the ocean/ocean life. Going off what Jack has to say in a previous comment, is it really so surprising humans missed something? Humans miss things all the time. Like having the right information in a car so the airbags go off correctly, then having to recall all models of that car. Salt is as present in our lives as driving cars, so mistakes can easily be made.
Where was this salt purchased? Was it checked out of the package? Did anyone touch it? There are a variety of factors that should be answered before we investigate the health complications of ingesting salt. I would be surprised if humans had missed something so harmful.