Plastic in the Pacific

We all know that littering is bad for the environment. But consider this excerpt from the book "The Hundred Year Lie" by Randall Fitzgerald:

"An area of the central Pacific Ocean about the size of Africa-around ten million square miles-has become a virtual museum for the debris of our civilization's synthetics paradigm. In this region circular winds produce circular ocean currents, and as a result, anything that floats and has washed down rivers into the sea ends up collecting here in the planet's largest garbage dump. Oceanographers who have visited and studied the region have discovered that this huge section of water, down to a depth of thirty meters, is choked with plastics.
....this plastic waste doesn't biodegrade and eventually disappear into the environment. Instead, plastic goes through a process called photo-degrading in which sunlight breaks it down into smaller pieces until it becomes individual molecules of plastic polymers.
...What makes this situation even more perilous is what plastic polymers attract. 'As these fragments float around,' says Moore [referencing Charles Moore, captain of the oceanographic research vessel Alguita, operated by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, California.], they accumulate the poisons we manufacture that are not water soluble. It turns out that plastic polymers are sponges for DDT, PCB's and nonylphenols-oily toxics that don't dissolve in seawater. Plastic pellets have been found to accumulate up to one million times the level of these poisons that are floating in the water itself...Hormone receptors cannot distinguish these toxics from the natural estrogenic hormone, estradiol...our worst pollutants are being ingested by the most efficient natural vacuum cleaners nature ever invented...These organisms are in turn eaten by fish and then, in many cases, by humans...' "

Now we can clearly see how human impact comes full circle, even when thought to disappear to the bottom of the ocean.

The impact of synthetics on the environment and our bodies is astounding. I highly recommend everyone to read "The Hundred Year Lie", Fitzgerald has compiled a chronological cause and effect demonstrating the introduction of synthetic chemicals and the relationship to human ailments. I guarantee that these facts will scare the you know what out of you.