Science and technology is constantly advancing, and the products derived from it bring great convenience to people at the same time, but also has a great impact on the environment. 1902, the Austrian scientist Max Schuschnigg invented the plastic bag, then known as the great scientific and technological revolution, but who would have thought that this has brought the later generations of the “white terror”.
For the land, plastics buried in the ground for 200 years will not decay and degrade, and a large amount of plastic waste landfilled in the ground can change the physicochemical properties of the soil and the soil environment, destroying the permeability of the soil, and causing soil crusting; the release of additives in microplastics will also have a toxic effect on the soil microorganisms, resulting in the delayed germination of seeds, inhibiting the growth of plants, changing the characteristics of the root system, decreasing the biomass, interfering with photosynthesis, causing oxidative damage and genotoxicity. , causing oxidative damage and genotoxicity affecting plant growth.
For the oceans, microplastics have been detected in 90% of the world's surface waters and even in marine organisms. Because microplastics are tiny, they are easily ingested by marine organisms, resulting in interference with feeding, damage to the intestinal tract, and disruption of energy flow in the body, which affects growth and development, poses a threat to reproduction, and can even lead to death.
For humans, microplastics can enter the human body through three major pathways: the digestive tract, the respiratory tract, the skin, and ultimately enriched in the human body. Scientists have found evidence of the existence of microplastics in human blood, lungs, liver, and feces, and microplastics have even been detected in the human placenta.
Plastic is non-biodegradable and the process of decomposition will continue forever, while the size of the plastic fragments will become very small under the continuous process of decomposition, eventually becoming microplastic forms. The threat to the Earth's surface ecosystems posed by microplastic pollution has been ranked alongside global climate change and biodiversity loss as one of the three major planetary crises currently facing all of humanity.
