云南省玉溪市重点学校2022-2023学年高二下学期期中英语试卷试题详情
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Plastic is everywhere. A lot of it ends up in the ocean. Most plastics in the ocean break up into very small particles called "microplastics"— less than five millimeters in length or about the size of a sesame (芝麻) seed. It is the most common type of marine debris (垃圾) found in the ocean. Plastic debris can come in all shapes and sizes and be harmful to our ocean and water life.
Microplastics come from various sources, including larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller pieces. In addition, microbeads, a type of smaller microplastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene (聚乙烯) plastic added as exfoliants (法角质剂) to health and beauty products, like toothpastes. These tiny particles easily pass through water systems and end up in the ocean, posing a potential threat to water life. What is worse, these microbeads or plastic particles in the marine environment are eaten by plankton (浮游生物), which are then eaten by fish. They continue to work their way up the food chain until they reach our dinner plates.
New research has shown that household dust is a more likely source of microplastics. According to researchers, 114 pieces of microplastic settle on a dinner plate during the 20-minute duration of a meal, adding up to anywhere between 13,000 and 68,000 pieces per year. And when you breathe in air, you could be breathing in the microscopic plastic particles as well.
How about drinking water? The non-profit journalism organization Orb Media tested 259 bottles of water bought from 9 different countries. The tests found that there was an average of 10.4 plastic particles (0.1 millimeters or larger) per liter of water. That level of microplastics in bottled water was double the level found in tap water. The findings suggest if you drink one liter of bottled water per day you could be consuming tens of thousands of microplastic particles each year.
It is apparent that the problem of microplastics is still a huge one.
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