Why we should ban plastic toothbrushes immediately

We all know how bad plastics are for the environment-from giant islands of plastic floating in the Pacific to fish dying of swallowing this toxic material created by the petroleum industry. Big money controls oil and plastics, and the world is waking up to how much damage plastic causes. The future of humanity is very dim unless we do something about this.

Off late there have been bans and restrictions on uses of plastic bags and plastic straws, a great step towards a cleaner, greener earth. But we have missed the plastic appendage we use at least once a day-the plastic toothbrush. I lay down the case here, with scientific evidence, that toothbrushes should be banned immediately from the entire planet.

A terrible invention of the plastics industry which you use every day-the toothbrush


A typical toothbrush has several hundred fine plastic bristles. See a closeup here:

Each toothbrush has about 300 bristles-enough to kill 300 small insects and fish


Can you imagine what happens if a fish in the ocean swallows these bristles? It is sure death for the poor thing. Even land animals like small insects cannot handle plastic bristles, and confusing it for something edible, readily swallow it.

CNBC report on mosquitos eating plastics, most probably they are toothbrush bristles.

Plastic bristles from toothbrushes, and other plastics in fish


The result, millions of insects die EVERY DAY from swallowing plastic bristles of toothbrushes. This is in addition to the large number of fish, including micro-fish, which die on swallowing these bristles.

My research shows that plastic bristles are even worse than plastic bags or other plastic objects like straws because of their small size-i.e. the number of innocent animals which will die because of toothbrushes is much larger.

I hereby urge the world community to take actions to ban toothbrushes, where the fine plastic bristles are killing millions of fish, insects and worms every day!

Filed under: Satire




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