While we know where the plastic comes from, the origin of this particular plastic is still unclear. But in general, whenever oil spills, it floats around and partially evaporates, thickening over time into plastic ball, then drifted ashore. It’s basically the super toxic Play-Doh. “Once it gets stuck in the rock, the waves will carry microplastics or any layer of trash and push it into this Play-Doh,” Hernández-Borges said. “Microplastics come continuously, continuously, continuously. The microplastics we found in the tar were similar to those we found on the beach. ” These tiny pieces add to the toxicity of plastitar, because plastic contains thousands of chemicals of its own, many of which known to be toxic for humans and other animals.
These researchers are yet to say what effect plastitar might have on the creatures that live on the beaches of the Canary Islands. But the problem can be twofold. “If there’s algae or anything, those rocks are completely covered, so they’re definitely dead,” Hernández-Borges said. Second, plastitar is darker than rock, which means it absorbs more of the sun’s energy. “If you touch it, you’ll see that it’s also very, very hot,” he said. That could dramatically increase the temperature at ground level, with unknown effects on the organisms that live there.
In a previous study on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean, a separate team of researchers found that plastic particles increase the temperature of the beach sand. That could harm sea turtles, whose sex is determined by the temperature of the sand the eggs are laid in – if it gets too hot, they’ll all turn into females, which isn’t good for the process. sexual reproduction of a species.
The discovery of plastitar adds another layer of complexity to the problem of ocean plastic pollution. For a long time, environmentalists were mainly concerned with big things, like floating bottles and bags. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that scientists began to seriously study microplastics, then discovered that nearly the entire Earth was contaminated. The particles are blow into the air and reach the highest mountains. Up in the sky, they may be causing climate effects – although it’s unclear if they’ll help in the end heat or cool the planet. People are eating and drinking loads of microplastics, and babies are drinking there is still more in their recipeBut scientists are just beginning to investigate may have implications for human health.
Even more recently, researchers have discovered “new plastic formations,” of which plastitar is just the latest. For example, when plastic burns in a beach campfire, it forms a polymer matrix that mixes with sand and other debris. “Plastics” form in a similar way to plastitar, when waves smash plastic against coastal rocks, only without the tar involved. (The high temperatures outdoors heat up the rocks, which can help the composites stick to them.) And scientists are beginning to investigate what they call anthropoquina, or newly made sedimentary rock. from plastic and other man-made materials. “If someone in millennia finds one of these rocks, they will find plastic, and they will see how we lived,” Hernández-Borges said. “So it’s a kind of geological records. ”
And because who will think about it — to be clear, we should Not inspired by plastitar to eliminate the sea of microplastics. “I read this and went noooAllen said. “Some idiot out there will go: Just pour the oil all over the surface, and then clean it. But not.”
