Tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles are emerging as a major threat to oceans, poisoning marine life, spreading toxic chemicals through food chains and exposing gaps in global maritime pollution rules.
For decades the world has faced an escalating plastic pollution crisis, with millions of tons of waste drifting across seas and oceans. Despite years of cleanup efforts, progress has remained limited, as scientists warn that tiny plastic pellets used in manufacturing are quietly becoming one of the most dangerous sources of marine pollution.
Plastic pellets, also known as nurdles, are tiny particles measuring only 2 to 5 millimeters in diameter. They serve as raw materials used to manufacture a wide range of plastic products. Because they are extremely light and slippery, they easily spill during storage or loading onto ships. Once released into the water, removing them becomes nearly impossible.
After entering the sea, the pellets mix with sand or seaweed and can drift with ocean currents for years. Their small size and buoyancy make large-scale recovery extremely difficult, allowing them to spread widely across coastlines and marine ecosystems.
Marine animals suffer the most severe consequences. Fish, turtles and especially seabirds frequently mistake the pellets for food and swallow them.
Scientist Jennifer Lavers warned that the growing volume of plastic pellets entering the ocean is enough to become “food” for millions of young seabirds.
“In some regions we are seeing plastic present in 100 percent of animals,” she said.
Once ingested, the pellets can block the digestive systems of marine animals. This prevents them from absorbing nutrients, eventually leading to starvation and death.
The danger does not end there. Plastic pellets can also act as carriers of toxic chemicals. Research shows that they absorb harmful pollutants from seawater. When small marine organisms eat the pellets, the toxins move up the food chain and eventually reach larger predator species.
One of the largest disasters involving plastic pellets occurred in 2021 when the cargo ship X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of Sri Lanka. The accident released huge quantities of chemicals and plastic pellets into the sea.
The environmental damage from that incident alone has been estimated at about 6.4 billion dollars.
Hemantha Withanage, chairman of Sri Lanka’s Centre for Environmental Justice, said the impact in the country was both immediate and long lasting.
“There is no longer any room to argue that plastic pellets are harmless,” he said.
International maritime rules under the MARPOL convention prohibit the intentional dumping of plastic into the ocean. However, there are no strict regulations covering accidental spills of plastic pellets during transport.
Researchers are therefore calling for plastic pellets to be assigned a specific United Nations identification number. Such classification would require stricter packaging, labeling and transport standards.
Scientist Theresa Karlsson said the plastics industry uses thousands of chemicals in production and many of them are harmful to both the environment and human health.
“This is the right time to introduce stronger global laws to protect the ocean from toxic plastic pellets,” she said.
