Invasion of the biosphere by synthetic polymers:What our current knowledge may mean for our future

摘要

In 1974,a member of the Council of the British Plastics Federation and a fellow of the Plastics Institute,stated that“Plastics litter is a very small proportion of all litter and causes no harm to the environment except as an eyesore”(Derraik,2002).It has taken less than fifty years for that opinion to be completely discredited,indeed,that opinion was already in doubt the moment it was stated.Nevertheless,it was the strong denial by the plastic industry that plastics could cause harm that delayed the study of plastic’s environmental effects for decades.Not until Moore et al.(2001)found six times as much plastic as zooplankton by weight in the surface waters of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre(NPSG).