Tuesday April 23, 2024
Earth.com —
We’ve all seen the heartbreaking images – turtles trapped in plastic rings, birds with stomachs full of bottle caps, and beaches littered with debris. But the horrors of plastic pollution go much deeper than what we can readily see. A new study by University of Exeter reveals that plastic is quietly destroying marine life at the most fundamental level: the embryo.
An embryo is a tiny blueprint for a future organism. It has all the instructions needed to develop into a complex creature, whether that’s a fish, a crab, or a sea urchin. Scientists have discovered that high levels of a common type of plastic, PVC, can interfere with this delicate process.
“When exposed to high levels of new PVC pellets, the species we examined went wrong in different ways,” said Dr. Eva Jimenez-Guri, lead author of the study.
“Some failed to make a shell or a notochord, some failed to form proper left-right features, some just stopped developing after a few rounds of cell division. They all failed to make a viable embryo.”