Plastic Eating Worms

Lug worms, a favorite of anglers and fish, are bottom feeders, eating the platics that break down on the ocean floor.

Since lugworms are sediment-feeders and low in the food chain, the contaminants will be concentrated when the worms are eaten by fish and crabs.

Emma Teuten at the University of Plymouth, UK, according to The New Scientist, has demonstrated in the lab that grains of plastic are much better than grains of sand or silt at adsorbing the common pollutant phenanthrene from water. Phenanthrene belongs to a family of hydrocarbons linked with cancers and respiratory problems, and plastic particles soak up 1000 times more of it than natural ones. "They kind of mop it up out of seawater like a sponge," says Teuten.