Seafood lovers eat 11,000 pieces of toxic PLASTIC every year thanks to this dirty habit
Microplastics caused by humans are killing off animals and about to flood our blood streams
LITTERBUGS' junk is flooding into the sea and small disintegrated particles of plastic are appearing on our dinner plates.
Scientists at the University of Ghent in Belgium have found toxic microplastics in seafood and say it is able to enter our blood stream.
Dr Colin Janssen, who led the research, said the presence of plastic particles in the body was "a concern".
Scientists have no idea what implication it will have later in life and for future generations.
But the problem is only about to get worse, they added.
Speaking in Sky's Plastic Tides' documentary he said: "Now we've established that they do enter our body and can stay there for quite a while, we do need to know the fate of the plastics. Where do they go?
"Are they encapsulated by tissue and forgotten about by the body, or are they causing inflammation or doing other things? Are chemicals leaching out of these plastics and then causing toxicity? We don't know and actually we do need to know."
It follows a campaign to ban toxic microbeads which can be found in baby wipes and exfoliating cosmetics.
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Mussels feed by filtering around 20 litres of seawater a day, ingesting microplastics by accident. Most are excreted, but on average each mussel contains one tiny fragment lodged in its body tissue. As plastic pollution builds up in the ocean that will increase. By the end of the century people who regularly eat seafood could be consuming 780,000 pieces of plastic a year, absorbing 4,000 of them from their digestive systems.
Dr Janssen said: "The next generation or two generations might say they left us a rotten plastic legacy because now we are suffering in various ways from that legacy. We have to do something about it. We have to act now."
There are more than five trillion pieces of microplastic in the world's oceans and the equivalent of one rubbish truck of plastic waste is being added to the sea every minute. By 2050 that will increase to four trucks every minute. The plastic in the ocean will take decades or even centuries to break down into small pieces, but many scientists believe it will never completely disappear.
Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at Exeter University, said: "Hundreds of marine organisms encounter plastic at the sea surface or in the water column, and many of those encounters are harmful if not fatal. The scale has passed the critical point. There is enough evidence that we need to take action now."
You can find out more about Sky Ocean Rescue and get involved by visiting the campaign's website at
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