With at least 10 million tonnes of plastic being dumped into oceans each year, experts have long been warning about an environmental plastic cataclysm. Now it has been shown that animals are dying from a new man-made disease: plasticosis.

Coined in 2023, the term shows just how prevalent and toxic our plastic garbage has become to animals. Not only are whales, sea turtles, fish and birds being poisoned by plastic. It has made its way into our own diet. In a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Raffaele Marfella et al, has shown that microplastics were detected in the plaque in veins of people who had cardiac problems.

In the animal world, seabirds seem to be particularly vulnerable. Plasticosis involves plastic ingestion and is causing damage to the stomach, scar tissue, and eventual death. It starves the birds who already have plastic-filled stomachs and is thought to be as lethal as asbestos.

In order to find out why birds were so thin and were dying in an Australian wildlife preserve, Hayley S. Charlton-Howard et al, examined 21 adolescent Flesh-footed Shearwater birds from Lord Howe Island in 2021.  Some had already died, while others had very low body mass. Their stomachs were found to not only to contain pumice, which is naturally used by birds to break down their food, Charlton-Howards’ findings published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials in 2023, were alarming for the seabirds:

Sources

Raffaele Marfella, M.D., Ph.D, Francesco Prattichizzo, Ph.D., Celestino Sardu, M.D., Ph.D., Gianluca Fulgenzi, Ph.D., Laura Graciotti, Ph.D., Tatiana Spadoni, Ph.D., Nunzia D’Onofrio, Ph.D., "Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events" New England Journal of Medicine, 6 March, 2024, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822

Plastic Pollution Is So Pervasive That It’s Causing a New Disease in Seabirds. (2023, April 6). National Audubon Society. https://www.audubon.org/news/plastic-pollution-so-pervasive-its-causing-new-disease-seabirds

Plasticosis: a new disease caused by plastic that is affecting seabirds. (2023, March 3). The Natural History Museum, London, UK. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/march/plasticosis-new-disease-caused-by-plastic-affecting-seabirds.html

Hayley S. Charlton-Howard, Alexander L. Bond, Jack Rivers-Auty, Jennifer L. Lavers. “‘Plasticosis’: Characterising macro- and microplastic-associated fibrosis in seabird tissues” Journal of Hazardous Materials. 15 May, 2023. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389423003722

Plasticosis. (2024, February 19). Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasticosis

Jennifer L. Lavers, Ian Hutton, and Alexander L. Bond. “Clinical Pathology of Plastic Ingestion in Marine Birds and Relationships with Blood Chemistry. (2019, July 15). The Natural History Museum, London, UK. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/july/ocean-plastic-is-changing-the-blood-chemistry-of-seabirds.html