The danger caused by contact lenses
Contact lenses can threaten aquatic life as most users throw these small plastics down the drain of the sink or through the toilet, so that they decompose into microplastics that end up in the stomachs of the rivers and seas and , finally it finishes in the alimentary chain, according to an investigation of the University of the State of Arizona that has appeared in Boston, in USA.
Contact lenses, used by some 45 million people in the United States alone, do not last forever, especially one-day ones, but there is no established way to dispose of them, according to an investigation whose scientists warn that these Contact lenses down the drain at the end of their lives could contribute to contamination by microplastics of rivers.
The results of the research have been presented on Monday at the 256 National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the largest international scientific society, which meets in Boston since Thursday and in which more than 10,000 presentations will be made. of results of different scientific matters.
The inspiration for this research came from the personal experience of Rolf Halden, who has used contact lenses for most of his adult life. Thus, he began to wonder if anyone would have investigated the environmental impact of this type of plastic lenses.
Thus, he adds that his team had already begun to investigate plastics contamination and it was surprising to open his eyes to not being able to find any study on what happens to contact lenses after use.
In the presentation of the results, the doctoral student Charlie Rolsky explained that the team began to investigate the contact lens market in the United States and the behavior of its users and concluded that between 15 and 20 percent of them pull the contact lenses through the sink or through the toilet.Thus, Halden, Rolsky and a third member of the team, Varun Kelkar, of the Biodesign Institute's Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU), added that around 45 million people in the United States only wear contact lenses.
The lenses that go down the drain eventually end up in the wastewater treatment plants and the research team estimates that anywhere between six and ten metric tons of contact lenses end up in the US wastewater each year.
