Microplastics can cut a plant’s ability to photosynthesize by up to 12 percent, new research shows
||| FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN |||
Microplastics are now a ubiquitous part of our daily physical reality. These minuscule fragments of degrading plastic now suffuse our air, our soil, the food we eat and the water we drink. They’re being detected everywhere researchers look, from Antarctic sea ice to human brains.
As scientists develop a better idea of where microplastics are accumulating in the environment, they’re just beginning to understand how these pollutants affect one of the most essential and widespread kingdoms of life on Earth: plants. A new study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, reveals how microplastics hinder photosynthesis across a wide range of plant species—including crucial food crops. “It’s really scary,” says Marcus Eriksen, a marine scientist at the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit plastic pollution research organization, who was not involved in the study.
The researchers found that the presence of microplastics (plastic particles that are less than five millimeters in size) can reduce photosynthesis by as much as 7 to 12 percent, on average. That could range from 6 to 18 percent in terrestrial crops, 2 to 12 percent in marine plants such as seaweed and 4 to 14 percent in freshwater algae. “The exposure to microplastics was not surprising at all,” Eriksen says. “What surprised me was the level of impact.”
A generalized reduction in photosynthesis at such a scale could have major implications for the global food supply, according to the study’s researchers.
With the current rates of worldwide plastic production (and resulting microplastics exposure), farmers could see a 4 to 13.5 percent yield loss per year in staple crops such as corn, rice and wheat over the next 25 years. Additionally, seafood production could drop by up to 7 percent as aquatic ecosystems lose the algae that forms the base of their food webs. This would seriously impact the global economy and exacerbate food insecurity for hundreds of millions of people, according to the study’s authors.
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Plastics are made from fossil fuels and the Oil Industry does not want their use to be limited.
Very few plastics are actually recycled -despite manufacturers and packaging companies encouraging us to believe this by placing the recycling icon on the packaging. We, the Public, have been deceived into thinking that plastics can easily be recycled. Instead, plastics are poisoning us and our environment.
Even on a remote island, our plastic addiction is harming other creatures:
https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/
“Albatross: A Love Story for Our Time” is a documentary by Chris Jordan that explores the devastating environmental tragedy of plastic pollution on Midway Atoll, where albatross chicks are dying with stomachs filled with plastic, juxtaposing beauty and horror to raise awareness about the issue.
Will we begin to care now that we understand that dangerous microplastics are everywhere -even in our human bodies?
And now, in a study published March 11, 2025, microplastics have been shown to increase bacterial resistance to antibiotics:
“In a startling discovery, a team of Boston University researchers found that bacteria exposed to microplastics became resistant to multiple types of antibiotics commonly used to treat infections. They say this is especially concerning for people in high-density, impoverished areas like refugee settlements, where discarded plastic piles up and bacterial infections spread easily. The study is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
“The fact that there are microplastics all around us, and even more so in impoverished places where sanitation may be limited, is a striking part of this observation,” says Muhammad Zaman, a BU College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering who studies antimicrobial resistance and refugee and migrant health. “There is certainly a concern that this could present a higher risk in communities that are disadvantaged, and only underscores the need for more vigilance and a deeper insight into [microplastic and bacterial] interactions.”
It’s estimated that there are 4.95 million deaths associated with antimicrobial-resistant infections each year. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics for many different reasons, including the misuse and overprescribing of medications, but a huge factor that fuels resistance is the microenvironment—the immediate surroundings of a microbe—where bacteria and viruses replicate. In the Zaman Laboratory at BU, researchers rigorously tested how a common bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), reacted to being in a closed environment with microplastics.
“The plastics provide a surface that the bacteria attach to and colonize,” says Neila Gross (ENG’27), a BU PhD candidate in materials science and engineering and lead author of the study. Once attached to any surface, bacteria create a biofilm—a sticky substance that acts like a shield, protecting the bacteria from invaders and keeping them affixed securely. Even though bacteria can grow biofilms on any surface, Gross observed that the microplastic supercharged the bacterial biofilms so much that when antibiotics were added to the mix, the medicine was unable to penetrate the shield.”