We swallow equivalent of two cereal bowls full of microplastics every year

THE equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic is swallowed by people every week.

In a year it would amount to two full cereal bowls, according to the news agency Reuters. Tiny plastic fragments enter our bodies through the air, in food and bottled water.

The effects on human health are not yet known.

The calculation is based on a study commissioned by conservation charity WWF International.

Most of it comes from water, both from plastic bottles and the tap, but it is also found in creatures such shellfish which swallow plastic pieces and fibres and in the ocean. Every six months, based on the calculation, each of us consume enough plastic to fill a cereal bowl.

That works out as 2.5kg (5.51b) of plastic a year.

Over a lifetime, it is the equivalent of the plastic contained in two household wheelie bins, according to Reuters.

Plastic breaks down over time in the environment, being mistaken by fish for food and entering the human food chain.

Microplastics, which are fragments less than five millimetres (a fifth of an inch) in diameter, can come from plastic packaging and synthetic fibres in clothing such as fleeces.

A study from September led by the Medical University of Vienna found people may eat as many as 73,000 tiny pieces of plastic a year, based on analysis of the stools of eight people which suggest every bowel movement contains around 200 microplastics.

Every week, the average person is believed to ingest about five grams, or a bottle cap’s worth of plastic.

That is enough to half-fill a rice bowl in a month, working out as 250 grams (half a pound) in a year, which is a heaped dinner plate’s worth of shredded plastic.