Might as well just eat plastic

When I was a young girl learning my penmanship (do they even have those lessons anymore?) I had my pencil in hand, and, in my boredom, I would chew the eraser right off my pencil (do they still use pencils in school these days?). Eventually, in middle school, we were given the privilege of using pens -- I still can't figure out why teachers withhold our pen-bearing rights until to a certain level of maturity/school age (fears of ink stains? of massive amounts of cross-outs? institutionalization?) But what I'm getting at is that when I was old enough to be allowed to wield a pen, I took to chewing on the end of pens just as I had in my younger years bit off the ends of pencils. Chomp chomp chomp, another pen cap mauled by my fangs.

At this point you're wondering what this has to do with the apocalypse. And I will tell you (finally).

According to this NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10patch.html?_r=3&src=twt&twt=nytimes), it turns out there are giant islands of plastic trash swirling about the ocean. The islands are more like whirlpools, the author says -- whirlpools of bits of plastic the size of rice. And, small fish eat the plastic, big fish eat the small fish, and we of course eat big fish. (It stops there because no one eats us, except maybe earthworms and vultures and cannibals.)

The cause for concern is that, as the adage goes, you are what you eat. And it would then follow that small fish eating lots of plastic are what they eat...and so on and so forth right up the food chain (even up to the earthworms and vultures and cannibals!)

My mom always yelled at me for chewing on my pens. She was quite concerned I would destroy my teeth ("stop that! your beautiful teeth!" she would holler) but little did she know that one day she too might be chomping on plastic via her favorite marine life aka dinner.

I mean hey, it's logical; according to the article, "One rainbow runner from a previous voyage had 84 pieces of plastic in its stomach."

Speaking of which, has anyone ever eaten a rainbow runner? Never seen that for sale in the Pathmark fish department. Who knows.

Anyway, when your ocean's full of trash and your fish are full of plastic, it sounds like the apocalypse to me.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10patch.html?_r=3&src=twt&twt=nytimes