HARRY MEAD’S column (Echo, Apr 9) entitled “The curse of the sea’s plastic soup” should send shivers down our spines. All the wildlife in our seas is under threat from plastic waste.

There is a morass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean as big as France. Animals and birds die by ingestion and entanglement in plastic. Millions of turtles have died as they think plastic bags are jellyfish which they eat and die a slow, painful death.

Laysan albatrosses, which number about 500,000 and live on Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean, are feeding their chicks on plastic flotsam which includes disposable cigarette lighters. The sight of a dead chick which has rotted away to expose a stomach full of brightly coloured plastic is heart wrenching and 97.5 per cent of these chicks have plastic in them.

Plastic never goes away. This fact alone should frighten us.

Every bit of plastic ever made still exists. It takes 40 years for a plastic bottle to biodegrade. Food for thought.

Malcolm Rolling, Durham.