9 in 10 rivers fail quality tests due to plastic waste

NINE in ten rivers in England are failing environmental quality standards because of plastic pollution.

While attention has focused on oceans, officials fear the problem is often closer to home.

The Environment Agency said freshwater pollution ‘should not be overlooked’, and called on households to keep plastic ‘out of our drains’.

Plastic packaging, bottles and microplastics can harm wildlife and pick up dangerous toxins. These can accumulate in fish and other river-dwellers – risking contaminating the entire food chain.

The warning comes in a report that revealed 86 per cent of rivers in England fail to meet standards for good environmental quality. It names plastic pollution as a future threat to rivers, adding: ‘Plastics can also act as a reservoir for toxic chemicals – these and plasticbreakdown products have the potential to enter the food chain and bio-accumulate in marine and freshwater life.

‘The public and businesses must do more to keep plastics, fats and household chemicals out of our drains.’

In 2016, three-quarters of the Agency’s tests to measure the health of rivers were rated good. But only 14 per cent of rivers reached the standard of ‘good ecological status’ overall, because if one test fails, the whole water body fails to obtain good or better status.

The Environment Agency has invested £750,000 to set up a plastic pollution team in the south west of England.

It comes as a study revealed microplastics were found in the stomachs of threequarters of deep-sea fish caught in the North Atlantic. Such fish are eaten by larger ones that end up on our plates.

Of the 233 fish caught at up to 3,000ft off Canada’s Newfoundland coast by the National University of Ireland, Galway, 73 per cent contained plastics, reported the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.