channelnewsasia.com 07 Jul 2025 06:00AM
Microplastics have permeated the region’s food chain, hitting countries like Indonesia and the Philippines the hardest. The programme Insight looks at the health risks and what is being done to boot plastic from our plates.
JAKARTA and MANILA: Milkfish — grilled, fried or floating in fragrant soup — is a staple on Indonesian dining tables. Its flesh is tender, its flavour delicately sweet.
What has no taste, however, would be the microplastics inside its body.
A study last year found that in nearly 94 per cent of fish sampled from Jakarta Bay, their gills and guts were laced with these toxic fragments, each no larger than five millimetres.
“If the microplastics are absorbed by fish and then consumed by humans, it means they’ll accumulate in humans,” warns Widodo Setiyo Pranowo, principal investigator at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency. “That’s dangerous.”
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