Plastic-eating seabird chicks show signs of organ failure and cognitive decline

Plastic-eating seabird chicks show signs of organ failure and cognitive decline

For years, Jack Auty studied how inflammation in the human body drives diseases, ranging from stroke to sepsis to Alzheimer’s, at the Tasmanian School of Medicine. But a visit to a seabird colony five years ago, where he saw many dead sable shearwater (Ardenna carneipes) chicks washed up ashore with their guts full of plastics, changed his course. When he dissected one of them, his first seabird, his trained eyes couldn’t miss the signs of sever…