What are Micro-Plastics?

What are micro plastics?Micro plastics are very tiny pieces of plastic usually smaller than 5 mm and are found in just about everything they’re not just in products but they’re in our water, soil and even our air. The small particles usually come from things like clothes made of polyester, industrial waste, and the breakdown a bigger plastics like bottles and bags and since micro plastics are made up petroleum they don’t break down naturally like food and decomposition ,so once the plastic is produced it will basically stick around forever.(Haab & Haab, 2016)

 

How Microplastics Get Out There/Why Microplastics Are a Big Deal?

So there are a few main ways that micro plastics end up in our environment. An example is personal care products such as face washes and toothpaste that use plastic beads called micro beads. Just one bottle can have over 300,000 of these little particles so when we wash our face, the particles don’t just end up on her face, but will wash down the drain and end up and a waste water treatment plant that can’t filter them out(Haab & Haab, 2016)

A huge source of how micro plastics get out or from synthetic clothing. Materials such as polyester or nylon have thousands of tiny plastic fibers that like I previously stated they go right through treatment plants and into our waterways even the fertilizer that we use for our plants are usually made from treated sewage sludge that carry billions of micro plastics . Even big plastic objects, such as water bottles or bags will eventually break down to micro plastics overtime due to sunlight.(Haab & Haab, 2016)

These micro plastics are everywhere. They are at our deepest points of the ocean even in our most secluded places like the Arctic.

Micro plastics are very bad news for all living things. Such as the plastics that end up lakes and oceans were fish and other sea creatures often would mistake plastic for food and once they are digested, their stomachs will fill up on plastic which would leave less room for real food and causing those animals to starve or even die .the plastics also have toxic chemicals so when plastic is digested by animals, it could move up the food chain .An example could be like a small fish that ingested plastic, then is eaten by a bigger fish, which then is fished out of the ocean by humans and ending up on human plates, which then those chemicals will end up in our systems.

Micro plastics don’t just affect animals, but they also affect how sediment and water move. The micro plastic creates surfaces where bacterial diseases could grow, which would mean the growth of harmful pathogens in areas.(Haab & Haab, 2016)

For humans, micro plastics are also very destructive as breathing or eating micro plastics could cause inflammation stress and possibly hormone problems. A 2024 ScienceAlert article said “over half the plaque samples studied and micro plastics in them meaning they can also travel to blessing and could be linked to heart disease”(Kwan, 2024). It’s pretty unsettling to think about especially that mostly every product that we use in our everyday lives include millions of micro plastics and there’s just no way really around them.

Conclusion 

Most people don’t know where micro plastics are so they just see them as a very small mess but in reality, micro plastics aren’t just a small mess. They are one of the toughest and biggest pollution problems out there. They damage our ecosystems, hurt fish populations and contaminate our drinking water. Micro plastics are connected to all parts of our modern lives. such as how we wash what we wear and what we buy. Yes they’re tiny, but their impact is massive. The only solution that can be given. It starts with us cutting back on using plastic materials and choosing natural fabrics, such as cotton and silk as a human population if we don’t start cutting back the use of manufactured plastic then the pollutant will just build up in our ecosystems and in our bodies.

This Photo Collage is only filled with 25 images of products that contain micro plastics ,I had about 75 images from just 1 day that I could have used for my collage.I don't know how many pictures I didn't take that included Micro-Plastics .That just shows that Micro-Plastics are everywhere from your toothbrush and even to a small fruit snacks wrapper.