Like seafood? Then you may be eating 68,000 bits of plastic a year

BRITONS could be swallowing more than 68,000 fragments of plastic a year each through seafood.

Molluscs such as oysters, mussels and scallops are among the most polluted items, evidence suggests.

Mussels were found to contain an average of around 0.7 tiny pieces of plastic per gram. Researchers found a single sardine could carry more than four per gram, and an anchovy up to 2.3 per gram.

The evidence comes from 50 scientific studies carried out between 2014 and 2020, and analysed together for the first time. Based on the seafood consumption of the average person in the UK, it concludes we could be eating up to 12,915 pieces of plastic in molluscs such as mussels, clams, cockles and oysters a year.

We could also be consuming up to 30,788 microplastics in crustaceans such as crabs and shrimp, and up to 24,563 from fish. That adds up to a maximum of 68,266 pieces of plastic per person per year, on top of plastic consumed from foods such as sugar and salt, and bottled water.

While evidence that plastic causes people harm when they ingest it is lacking, studies suggest it may lead to inflammation in the body.

Lead author Dr Evangelos Danopoulos, of Hull York Medical School, said: ‘I understand that this raises a lot of concerns around possible health effects. We are just starting to recognise that waste mismanagement can bring the plastic we discard back to our plates.’

Microplastics are less than 5mm in diameter and come from pellets and resin used to make plastic goods, or from plastic products thrown into the sea.

Experts suggest molluscs are a bigger source of microplastics as they sieve sea water to find food. Researchers writing in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives conclude up to 10.5 microplastics are found per gram of molluscs, up to 8.6 per gram of crustaceans and up to 2.9 per gram of fish.