Focus intensifies on impact of tiny plastics on human body Irish researchers helping international effort to close knowledge gap
Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 06:00
The impact of plastic pollution in our oceans, on our coastlines, in our soils and ultimately in our food and water has become a hot topic for environmentalists around the world – and, increasingly, for public-health specialists.
British broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series highlighted how sea creatures and fish species were dying from becoming entangled in plastic debris or eating microplastics. Yet in spite of all this attention on plastic pollution, we still know very little about the impact of micro- and nanoplastics on the human body that arise from the fragmentation of plastics down to a sub-micrometre scale.