You could be swallowing a credit card's weight in plastic every week

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/11/health/microplastics-ingestion-wwf-study-scn-intl/index.html

By Isabelle Gerretsen, CNN

Globally, we are ingesting an average of 5 grams of plastic every week, the equivalent of a credit card, a new study suggests.
This plastic contamination comes from "microplastics" -- particles smaller than five millimeters -- which are making their way into our food, drinking water and even the air.
Around the world, people ingest an average of around 2,000 microplastic particles a week, according to the study by the University of Newcastle, in Australia.

These tiny particles can originate from a variety of sources, including artificial clothes fibers, microbeads found in some toothpastes, or bigger pieces of plastic which gradually break into smaller pieces when they're thrown away and exposed to the elements.

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The largest source of plastic ingestion is drinking water, according to the research, which reviews 52 existing studies to estimate plastic ingestion around the world.

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A separate study this month found that Americans eat, drink and breathe between 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles each year, and those who exclusively drink bottled water rather than tap water can add up to 90,000 plastic particles to their yearly total.

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