Much stronger regulations over the use and the labelling of plastic packaging needed - Andy Brown

What is much more worrying is the plastic particles that we can’t see. When plastic products start to break down into smaller particles, they eventually reach sizes which are too small for the human eye to notice. That doesn’t mean that they are too small to damage the human body.

Tests on human brains are consistently finding quantities of micro plastics in the soft fatty tissues. In one recent test the scientists found 4,800 micrograms of plastic in every gram of brain tissue. That meant the people in their sample had 0.5 per cent of their entire brain weight made up of small pieces of plastic.

The pollution starts to enter our bodies even before birth. Researchers in Italy have found microplastic particles in human placentas.

The good news is that plastics can be fairly inert and there is no certainty that they will trigger health problems. The bad news is that you cannot escape breathing them in, eating them or drinking them and they contain an exceptionally large variety of toxic trace elements.

We simply don’t know the long term medical impact of lodging microplastics in everyone’s lungs. Nor do we know the impact on fertility of the high concentrations of microplastics that have been found in men’s reproductive organs.

Researchers have found extensive evidence of declines in sperm counts, decreasing testosterone levels, increasing rates of erectile dysfunction and rising incidence of testicular cancer.

Correlations are never a dependable way to work out what has caused a change. It is, however, usually sensible to take note of them and recognise that they might point to possible causes.

The likelihood that we are triggering health problems for other creatures that we live amongst is much higher. Sooner or later the majority of microplastics end up in the ocean. Just beneath the surface of the ocean there are trillions of tiny organisms some of which live by photosynthesis and some of which eat others. The presence of astonishingly high numbers of microplastic particles results in the predators eating indigestible items that can tear their internal organs.

No one can predict what the cumulative effect of that will be. Those small creatures get eaten by bigger ones that get eaten by people and both plastic particles and toxins can accumulate. Much of the oxygen on this planet depends on having a healthy population of plankton.

Deeper in the ocean the problems are better hidden but no less worrying. We simply don’t know enough about the complex life forms that live at the bottom of the sea to know what the impact on them is when a snowstorm of plastic slowly works its way down to the depths.

They have found microplastic particles at the bottom of the Mariana trench in the very deepest part of the ocean, seven miles below the surface. Just as they have found them at the top of Everest and on the surface of Antarctica.

There is, of course, no way of removing microplastics from the environment and every certainty that the quantity of them will increase over the next few decades as the consequence of the worldwide increase in the use of plastics continues. Half of all the plastics that have ever been produced were pumped out in the last two decades.

Because of their concerns over this many people in Britain have made real efforts to reduce their use of the material and to recycle as much as they can. But what happens at the end of the production, distribution and consumption chain has a lot less impact than what happens at the early stages of it.

There are still distribution companies in Britain sending products out that are protected from damage by large quantities of polystyrene despite the existence of alternatives. That wasteful packaging is immediately disposed of, can never be recycled, and breaks down into phenomenal numbers of microplastics. That practice needs to be banned.

There are still companies that are routinely wrapping products in soft plastics which serve no purpose other than to increase the quantity of waste we put in the bin. It is perfectly possible to sell many more things in paper cartons.

It is not enough to rely on consumers trying to dispose responsibly of the mountain of waste that accompanies the things they buy. We need much stronger regulations over the use and the labelling of plastic packaging and to start the long hard process of switching away from all non-essential use of the material that is doing so much harm to our natural environment.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.