Name: Hannah Huang
Social Justice Group: Microplastics (B)
Date of Fieldwork: December 13, 2024
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Colombe Jacobsen-Derstine
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
On December 13th 2024 we interviewed Colombe Jacobsen-Derstine, who works in the food industry, to help us fill in the blanks about microplastics and how its affects the human body. She taught us about how microplastics are also involved in the food industry, and how its bad for our bodies.
One of the things that we learned is that microplastics end up in the ocean and fish are affected by it. A lot of people eat seafood, whether its cod, tuna, eel, herring, crab, shrimp, lobster, or any food that you can catch in the ocean. If you eat seafood, this means that you are eating microplastics too. Microplastics are bad for your body, because most microplastics are toxic. Microplastics can be disruptive to your hormone balance, and cross barriers in your body.
Although seafood isint the only thing that contains microplastics, but what are ways that we can avoid eating microplastics? How can we avoid putting plastic in the ocean? You should always make sure that you are drinking filtered or bottled water because they are much cleaner than tap water. Especially in NYC, water that comes out of the faucet is very bad for you to drink because it contains a lot of bacteria. You should limit the amount of seafood that you eat, and you should eat farm raised seafood instead, because it is healthier and more safe for you to eat. Another way to reduce the amount of microplastics you eat is by eating in glass containers, or ceramic bowls etc, because in plastic containers, tiny pieces of microplastics are going to enter your food, and then the microplastics will be inside of your system. Preventing microplastics from ending up in our ocean will help the earth, our waters, animals, and humans. But we have to act quickly because there is no turning back.
