UKC

I have thoroghly enjoyed the latest offering from Sir David, but thought the tragic scenes of the dead whale calf carried around by its presumably distraught mum for 3-days and the link to adsorbed pollutants on micro plastic streaching the point as bit.

Don't get me wrong, the whole issue of discgarded plastic is an environmental menace and we should all be more aware of the damage it can cause.

However, is there any evidence to associate consumption of microplatics, the subsequent elevated body burden of a range of persistent organis pollutants (POPs), and perinatal mortality in whales. There may be evidence of elevated POPs in whale blubber but can we convincingly join the dots.

If there is credible evidence, great, otherwise we are just speculating, which in the long run can do more harm than good. I appreciate we shouldn't wait until we are facing another DDT, but we don't need to give the anti's an excuse to accuse us of crying wolf!

In reply to kipper12:

I'm not aware of a specific study on perinatal mortality but there are enough studies highlighting the health impacts of microplastics on the environment to show that the issue must be tackled now and we must take more responsibility to clean up our oceans (and the planet in general). We need to stop using 'throw away' plastic that doesn't totally bio-degrade.

In reply to CasWebb:

Agree that we need to move quickly away from a reliance on non degradable plastics, but I didn't think the last few scenes were the best way of doing it.

On a related note, might we need to be carful about biodegradable polymers. The degradation products may cause unintended consequences too. We may end up with a vast supply of a new energy source and cause a bloom of something we don't want, or perhaps less likely liberating a lot of potentially reactive monomers.

In reply to kipper12:

I haven't watched the programme yet so can't comment on it. Yes, I believe that we need to be just as careful about biodegradable polymers to ensure that they are truly biodegradable and leave only safe residues that don't cause avoidable side effects. We only have to look back a couple of decades at the effects of overuse of fertilisers on our rivers to see the results of unintended consequences.

In reply to kipper12:

Isn't there something about killer whales not breeding successfully due to PCBs?

In reply to Toerag:

This BBC article makes reference to it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39738582

In reply to CasWebb:

I’m aware of this, but again, it appears to be guesswork to link poor birth success to PCB levels. It may well be true, but what’s needed is something more objective. There are certainly examples of chemicals which can modulate reproductive endocrinology, leading to infertility, and some aren’t the usual suspects either.