Plastic pollution in our oceans is known to kill wildlife that ingest it or get entangled in it. This is common, too, with nearly 700 species known to have either eaten or been trapped by plastic in the environment. New research, though, shows that even animals that don’t outwardly appear to be impacted by plastic can have a broad range of serious health issues caused by it, too.

Researchers at the University of Tasmania recently took blood samples from young seabirds to study changes in 745 proteins, based on each bird’s level of plastic ingestion. The study focused on sable shearwaters younger than 90 days that appeared healthy. The goal was to see if there were less-than-obvious plastic impacts on wildlife.

Alix de Jersey, the study’s lead author and PhD candidate at University of Tasmania’s School of Medicine, says, “Plastic ingestion research is often documented on severely emaciated wildlife showing clear signs of malnutrition. However, we wanted to understand the burden of living with plastic in the stomach.”

According to their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, this burden is present throughout a large part of the body. Chicks with high amounts of plastic ingestion showed multiple negative impacts. That included cell damage, as well as less abundant secreted proteins, which suggests the stomach, liver, and kidneys weren’t functioning properly. There was even evidence of neurodegeneration in chicks with high levels of plastic ingestion.

This shows how much the plastics in our oceans are impacting wildlife, with de Jersey saying their analysis “suggests that while not all birds die from plastic exposure, they have severe health issues and suffer from reduced cognitive function.”

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