They discover living organisms capable of cleaning water from microplastics

According to the observations and measurement results, the average deposition rate of these particles in the presence of worms was five times higher than without their participation, experts from the center indicated on Monday.

The problem of cleaning water bodies from microplastics, which negatively affects the health of fish, animals and humans, will be solved by aquatic tube worms that live at the bottom of water bodies, according to the study of Russian scientists.

According to experts, the problem of pollution of ecosystems with polymer waste is one of the negative consequences of human activity, and there are no effective technologies in the world to completely clean the environment of microparticles from plastics.

The need to recycle microplastics is growing more and more, because in the past 60 years, the amount of its particles deposited in fresh water and sediments on the ocean floor has doubled by ten.

The experience of Tomsk scientists, who found out that tubeworms are able to bury this debris in sediments, provides world science for the first time with unequivocal data on whether organisms living in water bodies contribute to the cleaning of aquifers.

From previous studies, it was known that organisms living at the surface and in the bottom sediments of water bodies interact with microplastics, but it has not been determined whether they contributed to the burial of the plastic or, conversely, were released from the bottom sediments.

These tiny particles absorb everything in the water, including toxic substances like pesticides, heavy metals, and disease-causing microbes.

Organisms that feed by means of a filter (mollusks, small fish) accumulate on it, and this is how they can subsequently enter it into human food, it can even have a toxic effect.

According to the accumulated data, reproductive function, endocrine function and digestion in animals can be affected as a result of exposure to microplastics.

ji / gfa