Taiwanese seafood eaters are ingesting about 1,630 granules of microplastics every year, or the equivalent of a plastic straw, Greenpeace Taiwan said on Thursday.
Taiwanese aged 19 to 65 who eat seafood on average consume 50kg of fish and shellfish per year, Greenpeace project director Tang An (唐安) told a news conference in Taipei.
Fifty kilograms of mollusk meat from clams and mussels caught in waters around Taiwan contain an average of 14,773 granules of microplastics, Tang said, citing data from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), Ocean Conservation Administration, Taiwan Science Exploration Fair, Taipei Medical University and National Dong Hwa University
Local fish on average contain 796 granules of microplastics, and cephalopods such as squid contain 755 granules, she added.
The concentration of microplastics in mollusks is high and rising because the animals are filter feeders who directly ingest granules floating in the water, she said.
While it is widely believed that soaking clams or mussels before cooking cleans them of microplastics, the method is ineffective if the concentration of granules is high, she said, citing recent research.
When soaking in water, mollusks release some microplastic particles, but they immediately reingest a significant amount, she said.
Microplastics are particles of plastic garbage — for example food packaging or single-use utensils — which break down when exposed to sunlight, Tang said, adding that marine microplastics increasingly enter the food chain and also affect humans.
“The government’s policies have not been effective in reducing plastic waste. The exposure to toxic plastic waste is rising,” she said.
EPA studies show that the pollution in Taiwanese seafood is directly related to government restrictions on plastic items, Tang said.
“The agency has failed to implement effective policy measures to reduce plastic waste, and the expansion of existing measures, which the EPA announced last year, have not materialized,” she added.
“The usage of plastic items has increased by 22.8 percent over the past decade and no program is in place to monitor the health effect of microplastic pollution,” Tang said.
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