Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
A plastic bottle thrown into a drain does not really disappear. Nor does it stay whole. Plastic resists the bacteria that break down a banana peel or a paper bag, so instead of rotting, it splinters. Sunlight makes it brittle, and the pieces keep shrinking without ever going away. Below five millimetres, scientists call them microplastics, and at that size the puzzle is no longer where plastic goes. It is how it comes back.
Most microplastics are made small by attrition: car tyres grinding against the road, waves rolling broken bottles against sand, a polyester kurta rubbing against itself in the washing machine. One wash can loosen thousands of fibres. They drain away to treatment plants, which catch a good share of them. That catch is not the end of the story. The trapped sludge is often spread on farmland as fertiliser, and the fibres taken out of the water end up in the soil where crops grow.
The sea does the rest. Fish take in particles along with their food. Mussels and oysters, which we eat whole, gut and all, hand theirs straight to us. Sea salt, made by drying seawater, keeps whatever the water held. Studies have found microplastics in tap water, and in bottled water too, which many people buy to avoid the tap.
What all this does to the body is still uncertain. Scientists have not shown how much harm, if any, these particles cause at the levels we take in. I find that harder to sit with than a clear danger would be. Switching to a steel bottle is a decent habit. It does little about the tyre dust settling on a wheat field beside the highway.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Removing microplastics from waste water does not, by itself, keep them away from the land where food is grown.
The second paragraph shows that the fibres caught at treatment plants only move to a new place.
- Treatment plants “catch a good share” of the fibres. But “that catch is not the end of the story”.
- The trapped sludge, the thick mud left at the plant, is spread on farmland as fertiliser. The fibres end up “in the soil where crops grow”.
- So cleaning the water alone does not keep the fibres off farmland.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Treatment plants let most of the plastic fibres from washing machines flow straight into rivers. — Incorrect. Contradicted: The passage says the plants catch “a good share” of the fibres, not that most slip through.
Option 2: The sludge from treatment plants is too harmful to be used as fertiliser on farms. — Incorrect. Overstated: The passage only says the fibres reach the soil. It never says the sludge is too harmful to use.
Option 4: Crops grown in soil that holds plastic fibres absorb them and carry them into our food. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage takes the fibres only as far as the soil. It never says crops take them in.