by Ann Marie Dwyer

Created on: March 22, 2009

Plastic is now an ingredient in your dinner. It is made of toxic chemicals which do not biodegrade even when they are broken into single molecules. Why would you put it in food?

Nurdles

When plastic manufacturing plants make virgin plastic, they form "nurdles": Small plastic pellets about the size of lentils. They are used in molds to form the plastic products we use, from wrappers on packaged foods to toys.

More than 250 quadrillion will be made this year: More than 60 billion tons of United States nurdles. One pound of plastic equals 22,000 nurdles.

How do they get away?

Since nurdles are so small, they frequently slip through cracks in doors of trucks which haul them and the actual molds which make them into usable products.

Plastics factories have fences around which nurdles gather by the thousands like snow drifts, wasted product influencing both price and the environment.

Harbors and storm drains have millions swirling in the water. When loaded into containers for shipping, nurdles fly through the air like dust devils and settle on the surface of the water.

Nurdles represent ten per cent of all plastic debris in the oceans. The United Nations (UN) states 13,000 nurdles are floating in every square mile of the ocean.

Can nurdles be harmful?

Absolutely. Nurdles absorb persistent organic pollutants (POPs), like DDT and PCBs, because plastic naturally absorbs oils. Chemicals which are no longer in widespread use are still available (persistent) in the environment.

When nurdles reach water, freshwater streams or the ocean, they absorb chemicals from the water.

Absorbing poison from the water sounds like a good thing, but it is not. Now, the nurdle is a concentrated poison pellet.

What are they hurting?

Birds.

Birds think nurdles look like food. Birds eat dirt and sand to help them digest food. Nurdles mix with soil and sand, where they appear to be large grains or seeds.

Since plastic is indigestable, the pellets linger in the bird's digestive tract. Nurdles do not function in the way sand does in a bird's gullet, effectively keeping the bird from digesting its food.

As they remain in the gullet, any poison absorbed by the nurdles is passed to the bird. Nurdles are an equal-opportunity killer: Starvation or poisoning.

Fish.

Small fish face bigger danger from nurdles than only poison. Nurdles look like fish eggs, a primary food source.

Because the pellets do not break down in the stomach, small fish develop digestive blockages from which they can starve or die of constipation.

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