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Anthropogenic litter in terrestrial flora and fauna: Is the situation as bad as in the ocean? A field study in Southern Germany on five meadows and 150 ruminants in comparison with marine debris by Gabriele Meyer; Raquel Puig-Lozano; Antonio Fernández is a Environmental Science article available to read on EtoBox.

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In contrast to the abundance of research on marine debris, terrestrial anthropogenic litter and its impacts are largely lacking scientific attention. Therefore, the main objective of the present study is to find out whether ingested litter produces pathological consequences to the health of domestic ruminants, as it does in their relatives in the ocean, the cetaceans. For this purpose, five meadows (49°18′N, 10°24′E) with a total survey area of 139,050 m2 as well as the gastric content of 100 slaughtered cattle and 50 slaughtered sheep have been examined for persistent man-made debris in Northern Bavaria, Germany. All the five meadows contained garbage, and plastics were always part of it. Including glass and metal, 521 persistent anthropogenic objects were detected altogether, equalling a litter density of 3747 items per km2. Of the examined animals, 30.0% of the cattle and 6.0% of the sheep harboured anthropogenic foreign bodies in their gastric tract. As in the case of cetaceans, plastics were the most dominant litter material. Bezoars had formed around plastic fibres of agricultural origin in two young bulls, whereas pointed metal objects were associated in cattle with traumati

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Author

Gabriele Meyer; Raquel Puig-Lozano; Antonio Fernández

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Published

2023

Language

EN

Field

Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)