Baby Nematodes Inherit Plastic Trash From Parents

It's just like the old saying goes: One nematode's trash is its offspring's inheritance. That's according to new research that finds plastic nanoparticles eaten by nematodes can make their way into the worms' babies.

It’s no exaggeration to say the world is getting clogged up with plastic trash. Bags, bottles, nurdles (look them up)—a recent study estimated almost 5 billion metric tons of plastic waste had ended up in the environment by 2015. It would take more than 35 million 747s to lift all that trash, and the number is expected to more than double by 2050.

There’s already a lot of evidence that this plastic is bad for animals, like sea turtles choking on plastic bags. As plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces over time, those nanoparticles can be ingested by smaller and smaller organisms.

New research published last month in Environmental Science: Nano suggests that’s not just bad for those animals—it’s bad for their children, too. Dayong Wang and colleagues at Southeast University in China have evidence that nematodes can inherit plastic nanoparticles from their parent.

Wang’s team tagged the plastic nanoparticles with fluorescent molecules so they could track where they ended up. They spotted particles accumulating in the parents’ sex organs, suggesting a possible route that plastic could be transmitted to children.

The nematodes’ offspring were raised in a plastic-free environment. But the researchers still found fluorescent-tagged plastic nanoparticles in these second-generation nematodes, this time in their intestines.

Nematodes exposed to just 10 millionths of a gram of plastic nanoparticles in a liter of water moved around less, had fewer children and had more reactive oxygen species in their guts, which can damage DNA.