| Marine life has dealt with particles in the water for a billion years. Precisely, and that actually potentially works against the organisms' defenses. It's like the Trojan Horse, it looks okay on the outside. The particles being dealt with for a billion years I imagine have varied little in their molecular construction and bio-reactivity. Your idea is that we can introduce tons of new plastic particles into the environment having all the disruptive properties plastics have been shown to have, but it's okay because there are already 'particles' in the environment. Elsewhere you question what studies have been conducted to quantify damage done by these particles. As you may know, the earth is an immensely complex system. Sometimes it is relatively easy to draw a causal line from A to B. Other times the effects of something are no doubt there, but the interworkings of so many factors make it hard to precisely quantify the effects of any one factor.(see Honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder[1]) So your idea that we should go ahead and saturate the environment with this substance that has been shown in other realms and at other scales to be detrimental, and then if someone happens to take an interest in precisely quantifying damage that it is doing, then we can do something about it, seems wrongheaded. Maybe you're just playing the reflexive contrarian like worklogin, "shouldn't we avoid laws?" This is precisely what laws are for, to protect the common good! And it isn't a stretch to infer damage being done based on what we know about plastic. [1]http://cdn.billmoyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/6729628... |
