研究發現 全球90%的食鹽中含有塑料微粒

A study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found microplastics in more than 90% of the packaged food-grade salt -- also known as table salt -- for sale in stores.

《環境科學與技術》期刊日前發表的一篇研究報告發現，商店裏出售的袋裝食品級鹽（即食鹽）中，超過90%的都含有塑料微粒。

The team, from South Korea's Incheon National University and Greenpeace East Asia, sampled 39 brands of salt harvested in 21 countries. Only three of the samples had no detectable microplastics.

韓國仁川國立大學和綠色和平東亞分部的研究團隊對21個地區的39份食鹽進行了取樣分析，只有3個樣品沒有可檢測到的塑料微粒。

Microplastics are virtually everywhere. Sea salt and lake salt are made by evaporating water and harvesting the salt that remains. Plastic waste flows from rivers into those bodies of water, so it's no surprise that the salt contains traces of it too.

塑料微粒實際上無處不在。海鹽和湖鹽都是通過將水分蒸發掉來獲得鹽分。廢塑料從河流進入那些水體，因此食鹽裏也含有微量塑料就不奇怪了。

Scientists have been finding microplastics in salt for years, including in salt from China, Spain, and eight countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa.

多年來，科學家一直髮現食鹽含有塑料微粒，包括來自中國、西班牙和亞洲、歐洲、非洲各地的8個國家的食鹽。

But the latest study goes a step further, finding that looking at where the salt was produced is a good indicator of how much plastic pollution is coming from that particular region.

但最新的研究更深入一步，發現查看食鹽的生產地就能很好地說明當地塑料污染的嚴重程度。

The 39 samples came from Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK, the US, and Vietnam.

39份食鹽樣品分別來自澳大利亞、白俄羅斯、巴西、保加利亞、中國、克羅地亞、法國、德國、匈牙利、印度、印度尼西亞、意大利、韓國、巴基斯坦、菲律賓、中國臺灣、泰國、英國、美國和越南。

Of these, 28 were sea salts, nine were rock salts, and two were lake salts.

其中28種是海鹽，9種是岩鹽，2種是湖鹽。

Only three of the samples were microplastics-free: a refined sea salt from Taiwan, a refined rock salt from China, and an unrefined sea salt in France.

只有3份食鹽樣品中不含塑料微粒：分別是來自中國臺灣的精製食鹽、來自中國的精製岩鹽和來自法國的未提煉的海鹽。

Salt made in countries in Asia had by far the most microplastics of all the samples, which correlates with where plastic most often enters the ocean. Nine of the top 10 sea salts sampled with the highest amount of microplastics came from Asian countries.

亞洲生產的食鹽到目前爲止是所有樣品中含塑料微粒最多的，這與塑料通常流入大海有關。10種塑料微粒含量最高的食鹽中有9種都來自亞洲。

"The results indicate that not only is Asia a hot spot of global plastic pollution, as previous studies have suggested, but also that sea salt can be a good indicator of the magnitude of pollution in the surrounding marine environment," the researchers write.

研究人員寫道：“研究結果不僅表明，亞洲是全球塑料污染最嚴重的危險地區--就像以前的研究所顯示的那樣，同時也表明，海鹽是衡量周邊海洋環境污染程度的一個很好的指標。”

Based on their results, the researchers estimate that the average adult ingests about 2,000 pieces of microplastic in salt per year. But, they write, that still only represents a fraction of the microplastics a person is likely to consume.

根據他們的研究結果，研究人員估計，一個成年人平均每年光從食鹽裏就吃進約2000粒塑料微粒。但他們寫道，這可能只佔一個人塑料微粒攝入量的很小一部分。