by Wayne Havrelly, KGW Staff

KTVB.COM

Posted on May 16, 2014 at 12:21 PM

CANNON BEACH, Ore. -- It just might be the biggest environmental crisis that most people have never heard about: tiny, contaminated pieces of plastic are polluting the worlds beaches.

Small plastics along the tide line of an Oregon beach may look like bits of shell, but they are, in fact, a pervasive form of pollution that scientists have discovered on nearly every ocean beach on Earth.

A recent one-square-meter sample of sand taken from Fort Stevens State Park in Warrenton yielded 10 pounds of plastics.

Tracy Sund picks up small bits of plastic debris along the shore for the City of Cannon Beach, but he cant get to it all.

These pieces have been at sea a long time, he said holding a small plastic shard. The pieces keep fracturing off, getting smaller and smaller. They [can also] get ingested by wildlife.

The plastics dont biodegrade. The smallest shards, known as microplastics, can mesh unseen into beach sand and stay unnoticed for years.

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Microplastics polluting Oregon beaches, killing wildlife