Microplastics are widely present in the drinking water of Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, a newly published study said.
The tiny particles and flakes, produced when plastic is disposed of improperly and breaks down, seep into the environment where they can be ingested by animals and humans.
Recently, researchers detected microplastics in human blood for the first time.
Each year, the world produces upward of 400 million tonnes of plastic waste, UN data show.
The WHO in 2019 issued a report saying that microplastics were “ubiquitous,” but that not enough was known about what long-term exposure would mean for human health.
“We urgently need to know more about the health impact of microplastics because they are everywhere — including in our drinking water,” WHO Department of Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health director Maria Neira said at the time.
The study, conducted by researchers from the China University of Petroleum and Covenant University in Nigeria, did not investigate the health effects of microplastics.
However, it was the first to look for them in boreholes in the Lagos area, finding that they were “abundant” in the water and sediment in all of the boreholes they sampled.
About 90 percent of Lagos’ 20 million residents get their drinking water from boreholes, as they are considered less polluted than creeks and lagoons.
The water is delivered untreated and commonly stored in tanks above people’s homes.
The researchers said that microplastics do not degrade and if plastic pollution continues, it “will result in increased accumulation in the borehole drinking water with time.”
In the report, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, the authors suggest that the government should police industrial sources of pollution more diligently.
Researching microplastics in water is difficult, because of the lack of a standard way to measure contamination, they wrote.
“It is essential to develop general criteria for sampling and reporting on microplastics” for further research, they wrote.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened