[/floatl]Plastic Breaks Down in Ocean, After All -- And Fast
National Geographic News, August 20, 2009--
...new study is the first to show that degrading plastics are leaching potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A into the seas, possibly threatening ocean animals, and us. The researchers behind a new study, however, found that plastic breaks down at cooler temperatures than expected, and within a year of the trash hitting the water.
The Japan-based team collected samples in waters from the U.S., Europe, India, Japan, and elsewhere, lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist with the College of Pharmacy at Nihon University in Japan...
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....plastic debris--most of it smaller than a fifth of an inch (five millimeters)--is "dispersed over millions of square miles of ocean and miles' deep in the water column.
"The plastic soup we've made of the ocean is pretty universal--it's just a matter of degree," the researcher said. "All these effects we're worried about are happening throughout the ocean as a unity."
