He knew the terrible tales of sea otters choking on polyethylene rings from beer six-packs; of swans and gulls strangled by nylon nets and fishing lines; of a green sea turtle in Hawaii dead with a pocket comb, a foot of nylon rope, and a toy truck wheel lodged in its gut. His personal worst was a study on fulmar carcasses washed ashore on North Sea coastlines. Ninety-five percent had plastic in their stomachs—an average of 44 pieces per bird. A proportional amount in a human being would weigh nearly five pounds.

I don’t deny that in some cases, ingesting or getting caught in plastics can kill an animal. But children choke on plastic all the time as well. The point being it’s not the major cause of death for children. Or animals.

Murder (predators), I suspect is still the main cause of death for animals. Millions of birds are born every year, and millions die, and I don’t think plastics kill a disproportionate amount. Housecats probably eat more birds.

But I don’t have any numbers, so it could, indeed, be a huge problem. I doubt it.

He devised an aquarium experiment, using bottom-feeding lugworms that live on organic sediments, barnacles that filter organic matter suspended in water, and sand fleas that eat beach detritus. In the experiment, plastic particles and fibers were provided in proportionately bite-size quantities. Each creature promptly ingested them.

When the particles lodged in their intestines, the resulting constipation was terminal.

Ouch. Then again, wouldn’t evolution favor the critters that didn’t go for the plastic? And if a bunch of them die off, there will be a lot of un-processed detritus that the critters who are drawn to it would eat…

If they were small enough, they passed through the invertebrates’ digestive tracts and emerged, seemingly harmlessly, out the other end.

Great! And the waves keep pounding them smaller, so, pretty soon – the problem will be pounded out of existence.

Did that mean that plastics were so stable that they weren’t toxic?

Probably.

At what point would they start to naturally break down—and when they did, would they release some fearful chemicals that would endanger organisms sometime far in the future?

Uh…that’s why they’re such an eyesore. They don’t break down. Chemophobe.

All he knew was that soon everything alive would be eating them. “When they get as small as powder, even zooplankton will swallow them.”

Do zooplankton swallow? I don’t think they have intestines as such. Somehow I’m not worried about them getting terminal constipation.

But then again, that was the problem with CFC’s. Totally benign stuff. Great for the environment. But it kept not reacting with anything until it moved up in the atmosphere and hit the ozone layer. Hopefully all these hungry animals with big enough digestive tracts will eat up the plastic, excrete it into some form of coral and form long lasting reefs or something productive like that. And it won’t find itself up in the troposphere.

On the list of catastrophes to worry about – well I think this is pretty low.