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| Hoopie |
Plastics implicated in salmon decline
Bad news in an ADN story today. An environmental analytic chemist who teaches at UAA has found that phthalates released from plastics in the marine environment may be affecting the survival of juvenile salmon. Phthalates are added to plastics to make them flexible but are easily released into the environment, like when drinking out of plastic water bottles. They are ubiquitous in our environment. The oceans are full of degraded plastics. A 2000 CDC study found every single person in the study tested positive for phthalates. So why do we care? Phthalates can disrupt hormones and cause genital defects, breast and prostate cancer, obesity, diabetes... kind of nasty stuff.
So this UAA research was conducted on trout, which are genetically similar to salmon. Long story short, ocean debris, including plastics, is pushed more than a mile inland to a small pond on the Kenai Peninsula where the trout in testing are located. The water there is highly polluted with small bits of plastics. It's been found that DHEP, one of six phthalates being studied, is interfering with cell division in trout immune systems leaving them vulnerable to disease, and could be implicated in the decimation of salmon runs. This is some pretty hot research right now when Alaskans are wondering why so many runs are in disastrous decline.
