Plastic Resin Pellets: Your New Source Of DDT and PCB

Photo: Winnifred Bird I thought the term sounded familiar, so I searched TreeHugger for "plastic resin pellets" but surprise, surprise, the first few hits were ads for Chinese producers of the stuff. These are tiny pellets that you may find in teddy bears. They are actually used to make a whole lot of other things, all plastic. And, researchers are finding them all over the place, especially on beaches and in the oceans. As Hideshige Takada, professor of organic geochemistry at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, with colleague Yukie Mato and four other Japanese researchers first showed, these darn pellets suck up a range of persistent organic ...