Experts reveal plastic in the Dubai desert is responsible for the death of 300 camels in the entire Emirate.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himThey too mistake toxic waste for food and fill their stomachs with it: i camels, like so many other animals, they eat what they find. And often it is plastic. We are in the Dubai desert where plastic, experts reveal, is responsible for the death of 300 camels in the entire Emirate.
Overall, 390 dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) live in the United Arab Emirates. Now the study published in the Journal of Arid Environments estimates that plastic kills about 1% of these culturally important animals.
Read also: 60% of Western Mediterranean sardines and anchovies have microplastics in the stomach. The new study
Environmental scientist Marcus Eriksen, who analyzes plastic waste in the Persian Gulf, explains how the camels ingested whole blocks of waste which then accumulated in their stomachs, subjecting them to agonizing deaths that can last for months or even years. Specifically, of the 30.000 dead camels that Ullrich Wernery, the veterinary microbiologist at the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory in Dubai who participated in the study, has examined since 2008, 300 had guts full of plastic. In a subset of five camels, the plastic weighed three to 64 kilograms.
“I was in Dubai to examine plastic in the Persian Gulf when a camel veterinarian, Ullrich Wernery, of the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory, asked me to join him in the desert,” says Eriksen. We found five camel skeletons buried in the sand with masses of plastic waste in their chests. The camels only know that what is not sand is probably food: the littered plastic could contain food waste, such as oils and salts, which are attractive to the taste ”.
'It's a slow death': Camels are dying with masses of plastic in their bellies, study finds | CBC Radio https://t.co/UwIIZFGXvf
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) December 17, 2020
Bags, bottles, ropes, and other plastics can build up in camels' stomachs over the years, slowly calcifying into a solid mass. And not only that, the sacs in the intestine "also contain large bacterial colonies, so camels get sick easily because of the high bacterial load".
©Ullrich Wernery
“This is not a laboratory study. This is real life and it's happening right now to an entire population, not just a single camel - it's culturally significant. Plastic, which is often carried by the wind even over long distances, must be banned ”.
Dr Eriksen, who works at The 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on plastic pollution, has no doubts where to blame: "Single-use plastics companies are constantly fighting policies to limit plastic pollution. disposable plastic ".
We have heard of marine mammals, sea lions, whales, turtles and dead sea birds with plastic waste in their stomachs. But it is now clear that this is not just an ocean issue, but also a land issue. Plastic is everywhere and continues to kill.
Fonte: Journal of Arid Environments
Read also:
- They operate a Komodo dragon and find a whole plastic bottle in his stomach
- Animals suffocated by plastic: the shock campaign on the effects of pollution
- In the Mariana trench all the animals analyzed, even the smallest ones, have plastic inside
- The terrifying images of plastic balloons that are killing animals (and polluting the oceans)
