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.
According to the passage, mussels and oysters pass microplastics to people more directly than many other foods because
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → people eat the whole animal, including the parts that hold the particles
The third paragraph gives the reason.
- It says mussels and oysters are eaten “whole, gut and all”. The gut is the inside part of an animal where its food goes.
- So the particles the shellfish have swallowed are eaten too. That is why they “hand theirs straight to us”.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: they live close to the shore, where most plastic waste collects — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage says nothing about where shellfish live or where plastic waste collects.
Option 2: they mistake plastic particles for their natural food — Incorrect. Misread: The passage says fish take in particles “along with their food”. It does not say any sea animal mistakes plastic for food.
Option 4: they take in far more particles than fish of the same size — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage never compares how much plastic shellfish and fish take in. The point is only how they are eaten.