One of Canada’s top marine biologists is comparing the harm wrought by the accumulation of plastics in the world’s oceans to the warnings about the pesticide DDT in the famous 1962 book “Silent Spring.”
“What scares me about this is it is just accumulating. It is not going away. Plastic doesn’t go away. It takes decades to centuries to actually break down. That means whatever we produce now is released into the environment,” professor Boris Worm, a biologist at Dalhousie University, said in an interview.
Worm is the author of an editorial titled “Silent Spring in the Ocean” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an American scientific journal.
Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring,” warned of the environmental impacts of DDT on a variety of species, particularly birds. The book is often credited with altering agricultural practices, the banning of DDT, and the creation of the environmental movement.
“Carson specifically highlighted how DDT was a persistent pollutant that accumulated in the environment and threatened the survival of many bird species by interfering with their breeding cycle,” Worm wrote.
“This time a ”silent spring“ may be looming in the oceans.”
Scientists have estimated that concentrations of plastic in the oceans have reach 580,000 pieces per km2 and have warned those levels are increasing. The plastics are entering the oceans from a variety of sources, including plastic microbeads, plastic bags that blow away from dumpsites, and plastic debris that has found its way into rivers.
“There was no plastic around in the environment 50 years ago and these industrial microbeads are a relatively new phenomenon,” said Worm.
