A shocking new study uncovered that we are at risk of ingesting over a 100 tiny pieces of plastic with every meal. The plastic dust around the house may come from soft synthetic furnishings and artificial fabric. British scientists placed dust-trapping dishes on the dining room table around dinner plates in 3 houses at meal time.
The scientists from the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh found 14 tiny plastic pieces on the dishes after 20 minutes of mealtime. That means that there were 114 plastic fibers that floated down onto the medium-sized plates. The concluded that the average person ingests 68,000 to 415,000 of dangerous plastic fibers per year, simply by sitting down to a meal.
The study points out to the widespread of worrisome plastic materials in the air, which was revealed by the British Daily Mail recently.
The journal launched a long-term campaign Turn the Tide, and it published a study conducted earlier this month about fresh fish filets on display in large supermarkets. It showed that they contained 139 particles of plastic for each 240 grams of fish.
The Edinburgh scientists compared the plastic fibers in mussels with average home cooked food and found two microscopic polyesters in each mussel, which is attributed to their marine environment, and concluded that a person can eat about a 100 plastic particles per year by eating seafood.
Scientists have concluded that the synthetic fibers in home cooked food did not come from the food source ot from the kitchen but from house and restaurant’s dust.
Experts warn that microscopic synthetic fibers can damage the lungs, poison the kidneys, and interfere with the endocrine system. They further believe that the risks to human health increase when eating fishes from waters polluted by plastic refuse in oceans.