Researchers make concerning discovery embedded in tissue of staple fish — here's what you need to know
As reported by The Daily Star, hilsa fish have been found to contain microplastics — tiny pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters — along with cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic. These particles come from plastic bags, bottles, synthetic fabrics, and other items that wash into rivers and oceans.
Plastic production in Bangladesh increased by 169% between 2005 and 2014, which is significantly higher than the global average of 25%. Researchers estimated that the Ganges and its tributaries may be dumping up to 30 billion microplastic particles into the Bay of Bengal every day. Hilsa and other animals ingest these particles, which then enter the food chain and our bodies.
And it's not just hilsa. A 2022 study found that 17 fish species and three types of shellfish from another area were also contaminated. That means an adult eating just 300 grams of fish a week could end up ingesting over 74,000 microplastic particles a year.
This raises serious public health concerns for the millions of people who eat this fish every week. Microplastics have been linked to health problems such as inflammation, hormonal disruption, and potentially cancer. Contaminating such a common food source could harm the long-term well-being of the public.
Plus, many contaminated areas are also economically dependent on fishing. As fish become more polluted, communities may see their livelihoods affected, meaning more families could end up struggling financially. Microplastics also harm wildlife and disturb ecosystems, which has a ripple effect across the food chain.
Even though Bangladesh has a ban on single-use plastics, it's not always enforced. Plastic bags are still used, and waste continues to end up in rivers from both industrial sources and households. There are calls for the Bangladesh government to strengthen enforcement, raise awareness about plastic pollution, and make affordable alternatives available to the public.
This isn't the first time researchers have raised red flags about toxic fish. Similar discoveries have been made in the U.S. and Europe, and efforts to curb plastic production are gaining steam around the world. But with plastic production still rising, experts agree that we need to act now before more of our food becomes contaminated.
Environmental groups also help with ocean cleanups to remove plastic waste before it breaks down. Everyday people can do their part by using less plastic — from ditching plastic bags and bottles to supporting refillable product systems.
Do you think America has a plastic waste problem?
Definitely
Only in some areas
Not really
I'm not sure
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
36 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Unexpected medical issue grounds Isle Royale wolf-moose survey
A last-minute medical issue grounded researchers' annual wolf-moose survey on Isle Royale this past winter, marking yet another year that scientists have run into problems trying to count the animals on the remote island park. Isle Royale is a 134,000-acre (54,200-hectare) island in far western Lake Superior between Grand Marais, Minnesota, and Thunder Bay, Canada. The island, which doubles as a national park, offers scientists a rare chance to observe wolves and moose in their natural habitat, free from human influence. Researchers have conducted an annual survey of the island's wolf and moose population since 1958. Scientists from Michigan Tech University had planned to return to the island in January to conduct seven weeks of aerial surveys by ski-planes. Snow and bare branches make tracking easier from the air in winter, but the island lacks a land-based runway, forcing the scientists to use ski-planes that can land in the island's ice-covered harbors. The scientists released their annual report on Tuesday, but it does not include any new population estimates. The report notes that the researchers were not able to get into the air at all this winter because 'our usual aviation resources became unexpectedly unavailable due to extenuating circumstances and there was insufficient time to find a suitable alternative.' Michigan Tech spokesperson Hailey Hart explained in a telephone interview that the ski-plane pilot developed a last-minute medical issue and couldn't fly. The scientists were unable to find a replacement pilot. 'It was very sudden,' Hart said. 'It was a big bummer for them.' Researchers have experienced disruptions in three of the last five years they've attempted the survey. The COVID-19 pandemic forced them to cancel the survey in 2021, marking the first time since 1958 that population counts weren't conducted. They had to cut the survey short in February 2024 after weeks of unusually warm weather left the ice surrounding the island unsafe for ski-plane landings. The National Park Service suspended the researchers' work and ordered them to evacuate. Data the scientists gathered before they left showed the wolf population stood at 30 animals, down from 31 the previous year. The moose population stood at 840, down 14% from 2023. Most of Tuesday's report discusses observations a group of college students made on the island in the summer of 2024. They noted regular wolf sightings, observed a wolf chasing a moose and found the bones of a wolf that died a decade ago, well before the park service began relocating wolves to the island in 2018. The students also found the remains of 115 moose, including 22 believed to have died in 2024. Researchers believe wolves killed all but three of those moose. Hart said the scientists are planning another aerial survey next winter.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
A frequent flyer needed a kidney transplant to live. This Delta employee gave him one
CNN — Bruce Gamble has been flying out of Birmingham, Alabama, since the late 1980s for his job as a consultant for car dealerships. Along the way, he got to know Delta Air Lines employees at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport pretty well, making a point of greeting the customer service agents during his almost weekly travels. Jill Hickey, a part-time Delta agent who's been with the airline for four years, got used to seeing Gamble stop by the customer service counter to get a water after his flights. Little did either of them know those encounters would save his life. Hickey, 57, said she believes she crossed paths with Gamble for a reason. 'I knew Bruce had been having some health concerns, but I didn't know the extent, how serious it was, and what it was that he needed,' Hickey said. In November 2022, Gamble, now 74, discovered he needed a kidney transplant. Gamble has been a Type 2 diabetic since 2002, and an internist noticed his kidney function was declining. He was told his blood type had a three-to-five-year waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor. By then, he would be 75 to 78 years old, ruling out surgery. He was left with no option but to be 'an advocate' for himself, he said. 'It really started when somebody would say, 'How are you doing today, Bruce?' and I said, 'I'm doing fine, except I just need to find a kidney donor,'' he told CNN. That revelation 'opened the whole conversation up' about what donating an organ entailed, he said, including compatibility testing and making sure the donor is healthy. He started talking to people about his search for a kidney during his trips to the airport and just about anywhere else he went. The wait Gamble faced is average at most centers for a kidney transplant from a deceased donor, but in some parts of the country, it can be even longer than five years. Waiting times depend on several things, including the length of time a patient has been on dialysis or on the transplant waitlist; blood type; where the patient lives; and their antibody levels, according to the National Kidney Foundation. But a kidney transplant from a living donor can be faster. 'I'm here for a purpose' One evening, some Delta employees were talking about ways to help Gamble, whom they had all met at one time or another through his trips in Birmingham. Hickey overheard her coworkers' conversation. She and a coworker decided together that they would get tested. When she brought the idea to her family, her husband and kids questioned her a lot. She's a mother of two daughters, both in their late 20s, and one of her daughters was in tears out of fear of what could happen in surgery. But her family ultimately understood why she wanted to help. Hickey works as an elementary school teacher for gifted children during the day. Throughout her career in education, Hickey has met students who needed organ donations. Recalling those moments in her life, she said, made her want to help someone who might be in that same situation. If healthy and able, Hickey was going to donate. 'I was stunned, beside myself,' Gamble said when he learned of Hickey's intention. He told his wife of 51 years that a donor had emerged from all the time he'd spent spreading the word. Kidneys transplanted from a living donor are more likely to start working right away and may last longer than those from a deceased donor. Kidneys from living donors last an average of about 15 to 20 years, according to the National Kidney Foundation, compared with 7 to 10 years for those from deceased donors. A person can live a full life with one kidney but must protect the remaining organs by staying as healthy as possible, the foundation says. Over two years, Gamble had 10 other people volunteer to be tested, but all were disqualified for varying reasons — then came Hickey, the 11th person to be tested. Not everyone who wants to donate is able to give, but the test found that Hickey and Gamble were fully compatible. 'When Jill called me and said she was an exact match, I can't tell you – I was just speechless at that point,' Gamble said. 'But here we are. God blessed me with Jill at this point in my life. She's extending my life, and I've told her that many times.' Hickey's decision felt especially fateful after she was gifted a daily devotion book from a friend of Bruce's. She opened the page to the date of the surgery, and it read, 'Let Me lead you step by step through this day. If your primary focus is on Me, you can walk along perilous paths without being afraid.' 'It really solidified my faith that everything is going to be all right, that I'm here for a purpose,' Hickey said. 'Our paths crossed at the right time for a reason.' A remarkable gift Gamble's desperate search for a donor isn't unusual. There are not nearly enough organs to fill kidney transplant needs. About 90,000 people are on the kidney transplant waitlist, according to data from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration cited by the National Kidney Foundation. In 2023, about 27,000 people received a kidney transplant — and roughly 6,300 of those were from living donors. Gamble and Hickey underwent surgeries in December 2024 in Birmingham. During the procedure, doctors discovered issues with the blood vessels around Hickey's kidney that could have caused more health problems. The result was a longer surgery, but one that still went smoothly. Months after the surgery, Hickey, Gamble and their spouses went on a trip to California. Gamble has collected animation art for over 35 years. On their trip, Hickey bought artwork of Marvin the Martian, which Gamble hopes will 'get her hooked' on the hobby. Hickey said that Gamble's love for animation art sparked creative ideas that will apply to her teaching job. The two couples enjoyed spending time together and they say it won't be their last vacation as a group. Donation doesn't change life expectancy for donors. In fact, some studies, according to the National Kidney Foundation, have shown living donors live longer than the average person because only the healthiest people are accepted for kidney donation. In some ways, life has gone back to the way things were before. Hickey is teaching gifted children full-time during the school year, and she works for Delta as a customer service agent in the evenings. Gamble travels on occasion. He's 'semi-retired' but continues to do some training at car dealerships. In one important way, however, things are forever changed. 'We were strangers at first, but we're more like family now,' Hickey said.
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
How to make sure you're getting the right supplement. 5 expert tips to help you choose
Editor's note: The podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life's mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here. (CNN) — Take a walk down the supplement aisle of any local drugstore, and you will be confronted with a floor-to-ceiling wall of choices. Not just the usual suspects — vitamins and minerals — but also items as varied as turmeric, fish oil, probiotics and melatonin — as well as combinations that purport to burn fat (not muscle!), cure erectile dysfunction and boost memory. The deluge of options doesn't stop there. Endless social media posts claim a life-changing supplement or regimen will help you eliminate 'cortisol belly,' protect against the flu or 'reset' your hormones. But exactly how many things do we humans need to buy in the race to optimize our health and live our best life? All this noise around supplements generates confusion and anxiety, obscuring what science there is and making it hard to separate fact from wishful thinking. In the most basic sense, these products are meant to supplement the food in your diet with extra added 'dietary ingredients.' You would not be faulted for thinking that the US Food and Drug Administration regulates supplements — and the agency does, but probably not in the way you might think. Thanks to a 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, or DSHEA, supplements are regulated more like a subcategory of foods, not a subcategory of medicine. This essentially means that the FDA does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed, unlike pharmaceuticals, which must be shown to be both safe and effective in clinical trials. 'DSHEA is the current framework that all dietary supplements are sold in,' supplement safety advocate Dr. Pieter Cohen told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast, Chasing Life. The law, in part, allowed the industry to explode from approximately 4,000 products in 1994, to some 90,000 in 2017, according to estimates in a 2022 AMA Journal of Ethics policy paper. 'Now, that law in 1994 was initially … designed to better regulate vitamins and minerals,' explained Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at Cambridge Health Alliance, where he leads the Supplement Research Program. 'What unfortunately happened — unfortunately, in my opinion — was that that same structure was expanded to include … all nature of botanicals; many different types of extracts, like, let's say, a cow thyroid extract; live microorganisms, like both bacteria and yeast, that are sold as probiotics; protein powders; amino acids. All this was lumped together under that same framework … and all of them were called 'dietary supplements' or 'dietary ingredients.'' You can listen to the full episode here. The FDA does have some power to take action against supplements that are adulterated or misbranded, but only after they are on the market. 'The FDA is in the position of looking for problems out in the marketplace after supplements are being sold, and then working to try to identify the products, which is incredibly difficult, because they don't have an effective system to detect harms, and then to try to remove those dangerous products,' Cohen said. While regulations exist, 'it's companies selling us whatever they choose to declare and identify as a dietary supplement,' he said. He called it 'a system that emphasizes access and minimizes the assurances of safety or at least leaves safety in the manufacturer's court.' What should consumers do before plunking down money at the health food store? Cohen explains what you should know about product claims and offers five tips when deciding which supplements to buy, keep or toss. How the FDA can and can't regulate the supplement industry doesn't even address the issue of what actually works and what you might actually need. Some studies show certain well-known vitamins or minerals can help particular conditions, but often recommendations change after new information comes to light. Good-quality clinical trials are expensive and hard to conduct (or data are gathered through epidemiological studies, so cause and effect can't be definitively proven); they rarely are done on less-well known (or blended) supplements. The label required on US supplements, in essence, occupies a gray zone, and the average consumer might not know that they are expected to read between the lines. A product label is permitted to contain a claim about the effect of the supplement on the body's structure or function (for example, 'helps support flexibility'). But the label 'may not claim to diagnose, mitigate, treat, cure, or prevent a specific disease or class of diseases,' according to DSHEA. The law allows manufacturers to make those gray-zone, health-adjacent claims as long as they include a disclaimer that the claim has not been evaluated by the FDA. The situation is not likely to change any time soon. 'A core concern I have with the current regulatory framework that really inhibits us moving forward is that there is no incentive for manufacturers to conduct carefully done clinical trials,' Cohen said. 'One thing we haven't talked about yet is that one other part of the law is that supplements can claim to have health effects without it being proven in humans,' he noted. 'Since you can do that without doing a clinical trial, what's the incentive to invest in all that money, millions of dollars, to do a clinical trial? 'The only potential outcome is negative — because if you're right, you were already advertising it as it was beneficial to your health and all you did was to prove that your claim is correct,' he said. 'But more likely, if it turns out it doesn't really work like you had hoped it did, and all that money is wasted, and then you've got a problem. But the good news, I guess, is that you can still keep on selling it as if it does work, even when the studies come out negative.' The FDA has certain best practice rules in place when it comes to manufacturing, but it lacks oversight to ensure what is on the label is actually in the supplement, according to Cohen. That's why it's essential to choose supplements with a discerning eye. 'Toss away all supplements that do not include the official stamps from NSF (NSF International) or USP (US Pharmacopeia),' said Cohen said via email, referring to two independent, not-for-profit agencies that test supplements and then certify them. 'The FDA does not test supplements before they are sold,' he said. 'Unless supplements have been certified by a high-quality third-party organization, such as NSF or USP, it is not possible to know what's really inside the bottle.' 'Both those groups do deep dives into the quality of manufacturing,' Cohen told Gupta on the podcast. 'They look at the original ingredients that are coming (so that) when consumers are going in to purchase this online or in a store, that the label accurately represents what's in the product.' Another reputable third-party tester is But remember, none of these organizations test for efficacy, that is whether a supplement does what it claims to do. 'If you say something's good for gut health or will boost your immunity, those claims are not assessed by these companies,' Cohen told Gupta. 'The companies are just looking at — is the powder in the bottle the same as what's on the label?' A good rule of thumb when checking ingredient lists for supplements is less is more. 'Toss away all supplements that list two or more botanical ingredients on the label,' Cohen said. 'Manufacturers are not required to share the details of each ingredient when mixing multiple botanical ingredients in the same supplement,' he said. For example, you might not know the ratio of one ingredient to the others, how fresh each one is, or the process by which each is prepared and then blended together. 'The only way to ensure that sufficient information about the botanical is provided on the label, (is to) select only single-ingredient supplements,' he added. When you shop for dietary supplements, avoid products that claim in vague language to promote health benefits, Cohen said, such as 'boosts immunity' or 'improves cognition.' 'Supplement claims are not vetted by the FDA, and manufacturers do not need to perform studies of the supplement to demonstrate any benefit before selling the product,' he noted. Cohen said it's best to avoid supplements with these types of claims and instead 'obtain information about benefits and risks of supplements from a reliable, independent source, such as the National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements.' Supplements can lose potency or, like fish oil, even go bad. 'Toss away all supplements that are past their expiration date,' Cohen said. 'Supplements past their expiration date are unlikely to have the correct amount of active ingredients as listed on the label,' he explained. It's important to incorporate any supplements prescribed by your doctor in your routine on a consistent basis. Following your annual wellness visit, your physician might say, for example, that you need more iron or vitamin B12 or vitamin D based on bloodwork. 'Take all the supplements that your doctor recommends,' Cohen said. 'Many vitamin and mineral supplements are key to treating a variety of health conditions, so if your doctor recommends one or more supplements, remember to take them regularly,' he said. Most healthy people probably don't need to take even a multivitamin, according to Cohen. 'My clinical experience is that regardless of how people are eating, as long as people are not on a highly restrictive diet, that they are going to get sufficient vitamins and minerals,' he told Gupta. 'Even if they're eating mainly manufactured or processed foods, or they're growing everything in their own garden, because of supplementation (in the food system), I'm not seeing serious vitamin deficiencies in my practice.' Of course, it is not a bad idea to check with your doctor before you start a new supplement, and certainly let them know during your annual exam what you are currently taking. Some supplements can interact with certain medications, while others shouldn't be used by people with certain health conditions. We hope these five tips help you make better sense of supplements. Listen to the full episode here. Join us next week for a new episode of the Chasing Life podcast. CNN Podcasts' Madeleine Thompson and Kyra Dahring contributed to this report.
