Deadly plastics threaten polar bears

…these polar bears, and the reason that they are endangered is two fold. One is simply the rising temperatures mean that the sea ice is starting to disappear, the creatures that they live off are starting to be killed off. The second factor, which is almost as scary, is something called PCBs. These are little grains of plastic. If you put a carrier bag or anything made of plastic, eventually it decays and it erodes, and if it’s in water, it ends up as these tiny particles. It’s like the plastic equivalent of sand, and these get into the food chain. They are eaten by the krill, and the krill are probably eaten by the prawns, and the prawns are eaten by the fish and the fish are eaten by the seals, and the seals are eaten by the polar bears. This has a particularly nasty effect on polar bears, it causes a condition called pseudo-female hermaphroditism, and what this means is that about 10 to 15 percent of these polar bears develop two sets of sex organs, which sounds kind of good, but trust me it’s not, and they can’t reproduce.

So 10 to 15 percent of these polar bears are unable to reproduce, on top of this their environment is being destroyed, and this is why some people say that within just 30 years, but even the most optimistic predictions are that within 50 years no more polar bears. Also many of the walruses you see up there will also be extinct.