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Consider some of the things you use in a typical day: your toothbrush, your backpack, your pens, your cell phone, your shoes. They all likely contain plastic. It’s hard to imagine living without this versatile, inexpensive, lightweight material. But as important as plastic is to our modern lives, the human-made substance is a big problem for our planet.
Plastic first started being widely produced in the 1950s. Ever since, manufacturers have steadily made more and more of the synthetic material. They now produce nearly 400 million tons of plastic every year (see Convenience or Curse?). That’s a weight equal to more than 1,000 Empire State Buildings! Much of that plastic ends up polluting the environment, particularly the ocean. Wildlife, from seabirds and sea turtles to marine mammals and fish, can be injured or die when they become tangled in plastic debris or mistake it for food and eat it. Scientists have many other concerns about plastic pollution as well.
Recently, researchers discovered that plastic littering the oceans could affect the very air we breathe. Chemicals leaching from plastics into waterways could threaten an important group of marine microorganisms. These tiny ocean-dwelling microbes called phytoplankton are responsible for producing at least 75 percent of the oxygen we breathe. The rest comes from trees, algae, and other plants.
You use many items on a typical day. Think about your toothbrush, backpack, pens, cell phone, and shoes. They all likely contain plastic. This material is inexpensive and lightweight, and has many uses. It’s hard to imagine life without it. Plastic may be important to our modern lives. But the human-made substance is a big problem for our planet.
Plastic started being widely produced in the 1950s. Manufacturers have been making more and more of the synthetic material ever since. Now they produce nearly 400 million tons of plastic every year (see Convenience or Curse?). That amount weighs more than 1,000 Empire State Buildings! Much of that plastic ends up polluting the environment, especially the ocean. It can hurt wildlife, like seabirds, sea turtles, marine mammals, and fish. They become tangled in plastic waste, or they think it’s food and eat it. Then they can be injured or die. And scientists have many other concerns about plastic pollution.
Recently, researchers found another problem. Plastic litter in the oceans could affect the air we breathe. Chemicals leach from plastics into waterways. They could threaten an important group of microorganisms in the oceans. These tiny microbes are called phytoplankton. They produce at least 75 percent of the oxygen we breathe. The rest comes from algae, trees, and other plants.