{"id":90691,"date":"2019-05-14T04:42:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T11:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/its-not-just-fish-plastic-pollution-harms-the-bacteria-that-help-us-breathe"},"modified":"2019-05-14T04:42:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T11:42:23","slug":"its-not-just-fish-plastic-pollution-harms-the-bacteria-that-help-us-breathe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/its-not-just-fish-plastic-pollution-harms-the-bacteria-that-help-us-breathe","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not just fish, plastic pollution harms the bacteria that help us breathe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/its-not-just-fish-plastic-pollution-harms-the-bacteria-that-help-us-breathe2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe looked at a group of tiny, green bacteria called <i>Prochlorococcus<\/i> which is the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth, with a global population of around three octillion (~1027) individuals,\u201d says Sasha.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Ten per cent of the oxygen we breathe comes from just one kind of bacteria in the ocean. Now laboratory tests have shown that these bacteria are susceptible to plastic pollution, according to a study published in Communications Biology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found that exposure to chemicals leaching from <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/plastic+pollution\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">plastic pollution<\/a> interfered with the growth, photosynthesis and oxygen production of <i>Prochlorococcus<\/i>, the ocean\u2019s most abundant photosynthetic bacteria,\u201d says lead author and Macquarie University researcher Dr. Sasha Tetu.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow we\u2019d like to explore if <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/plastic\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">plastic<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/pollution\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">pollution<\/a> is having the same impact on these microbes in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-05-fish-plastic-pollution-bacteria.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWe looked at a group of tiny, green bacteria called Prochlorococcus which is the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth, with a global population of around three octillion (~1027) individuals,\u201d says Sasha. Ten per cent of the oxygen we breathe comes from just one kind of bacteria in the ocean. Now laboratory tests have shown [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}