Treehugger Tuesday

From the website "New Atlas":

Plastic Trash is the Latest Threat to Coral Reefs
Ben Coxworth
January 26th, 2018

Potentially bacteria-spreading plastic waste on a coral reef (Credit: Tane Sinclair-Taylor @Tanetangaroa)

As if the world's coral reefs weren't already in enough danger due to bleaching, a new study indicates that water-borne plastic trash is also killing them off. According to the study, when such debris comes into contact with corals, the likelihood of disease increases from 4 to 89 percent.

"Plastic items – commonly made of polypropylene, such as bottle caps and toothbrushes – have been shown to become heavily inhabited by bacteria," says lead scientist Joleah Lamb, a postdoctoral research fellow at Cornell University who began her research while she was a doctoral candidate at Australia's James Cook University. "This is associated with the globally devastating group of coral diseases known as white syndromes."

Read the entire article here.