This plastic contamination comes from “microplastics” — particles smaller than five millimeters — which are making their way into our food, drinking water and even the air.

…The average person consumes as many as 1,769 particles of plastic every week just by drinking water — bottled or from the tap. But there could be large regional variations. It quotes a 2018 study that found twice as much plastic in water in the United States and India than in European or Indonesian tap water.

…Shellfish is the second biggest source of plastic ingestion, with the average person consuming as many as 182 microparticles — 0.5 grams — from this per week. The report says this is because “shellfish are eaten whole, including their digestive system, after a life in plastic polluted seas.”

…Globally, more than 330 million metric tons of plastic is produced each year, and global plastic production is expected to triple by 2050.

…[When] microplastics are shown to damage human health, it will be very difficult to remove them from the environment.

“Therefore we need to tackle plastic pollution at its very source [and] stop it from getting into the nature in the first place,” [Kavita Prakash-Mani, global conservation director at WWF International] told CNN, stressing that the priority should be reducing plastic production [emphasis: peanut gallery].

You could be swallowing a credit card’s weight in plastic every week – CNN

hmmmm