It is no news that the world's ocean is unfortunately full of plastic. The waterbodies are at a critical stage as the unlimited amount of plastic floating in the water are choking the helpless marine animals. Over eight billion metric tons of every year and that is a scary amount for the marine life. However, recently the attention has deviated to tons of microplastics that have contaminated the oceans. The plastic that doesn't wash ashore, break down gradually into tiny bits, ones smaller than 5 mm and float into the water.

These microplastics have known to be ingested by various marine animals and thus enter the food chain. Since these microplastics are non-biodegradable, they persist in the food chain for a really long time. Once these marine animals ingest it, the microplastics further are ingested by other animals or humans who eat them. Plastic Pollution: Microplastics Found in the World's Remotest Ocean by Volvo Ocean Race Science Programme.

However, this phenomenon has been worrying the gastroenterologists quite recently. Microplastics have invaded most of our food and even our stomachs and intestines. The United European Gastroenterology meeting in Vienna raised this issue. The researchers announced they had detected microplastics in stool samples from 'every single one of a small group of international test subjects.' The study tested eight subjects from eight different countries. The samples were from countries Japan, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK, Russia, Poland, and Italy. And to the surprise of the researchers, the poop of every participant was tested positive for plastic. From polyethene found usually in plastic bags to polypropylene (found in bottle caps and even polyvinyl chloride (found in PVC pipe.) 9 types of plastic were detected out of the ten types of plastics the researchers screened for.20 particles of microplastic was found per quarter pound of poop, on an average.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 23, 2018 12:31 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).