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.
The main purpose of the passage is:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → to trace how plastic, once broken into tiny pieces, finds its way back to people through water and food
The writer follows the path of plastic from the bin back to the people who threw it away.
- The first paragraph sets the question. Plastic does not rot. It breaks into smaller pieces, and the puzzle is “how it comes back”.
- The next two paragraphs show the routes: fibres through sludge into farm soil, particles through fish and shellfish, and through sea salt, tap water and bottled water.
- To trace means to follow the path of something step by step. That is what the passage does.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: to argue that microplastics have been proven to be a serious danger to human health — Incorrect. Contradicted: The last paragraph says scientists have not shown how much harm, “if any”, these particles cause.
Option 3: to describe how treatment plants take plastic fibres out of the water that drains from homes — Incorrect. Too narrow: Treatment plants come up in one sentence of the second paragraph. They are only one stop on the route.
Option 4: to persuade readers to give up plastic bottles in favour of steel ones — Incorrect. Wrong focus: The writer calls a steel bottle “a decent habit” but adds that it “does little” about the problem. The passage does not push readers towards it.