Bees Are Building Nests With Our Waste Plastic 92
Daniel_Stuckey writes "In a paper published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecosphere, researchers from York University and the University of Guelph in Canada explained that while plastic waste has previously been shown to have devastating impacts on the environment, less attention has been given to the resourcefulness of species in the face of their changing surroundings. "Plastic waste pervades the global landscape," they wrote. "Although adverse impacts on both species and ecosystems have been documented, there are few observations of behavioral flexibility and adaptation in species, especially insects, to increasingly plastic-rich environments.""
It's not only the "microparticles" (Score:5, Interesting)
The plastic microparticles will inevitably appear in our honey.
In order to make plastic "Plastic" many types of chemicals were used. Some of the chemicals make the plastic "elastic", while some others make them tough, or heat resistant, or whatever characteristics the end-product form of plastic is supposed to be.
Some of those chemicals, when enter our bodies, can mimic the effect of Estrogen ( http://www.fastcompany.com/173... [fastcompany.com] ) and mess up our body's hormonal balances.
Those insects might be resourceful, but the same estrogen mimicking chemical could also mess up the bee's biology too.
Colony collapse (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder whether all the chemicals in various plastics could be responsible for colony collapse in bees. What happens if they're making their homes out of materials that are toxic to them?
Re:Reminds of this from the late George Carlin... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably only a question of time before plastic IS biodegradeable. Nylon used to be non-biodegradeable too, then this [wikipedia.org] happened.