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Up to 90% of seabirds have plastic in their guts, study finds
September 1, 2015
Up to 90% of seabirds have plastic in their guts, study finds
Associated Press
Tuesday 1 September 2015 03.44 BST
As many as nine out of 10 of the world’s seabirds are likely to have pieces of plastic in their guts, a new study estimates.
An Australian team of scientists who have studied birds and marine debris found that far more seabirds were affected than the previous estimate of 29%. Their results were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s pretty astronomical,” said study coauthor Denise Hardesty, a senior research scientist at the CSIRO.
She said the problem with plastics in the ocean was increasing as the world made more of it. “In the next 11 years we will make as much plastic as has been made since industrial plastic production began in the 1950s.”
Read more at The Guardian.
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