Nanoplastics concentrate toxic compounds within themselves, smuggling them past animals' defense system. This does not happen with rock. There has not been enough time for animals to evolve systems to remove nanoplastics from their bodies.
You might try DOI 10.1039/C8NR09321K (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/nr/c8nr0...).
In summary, for whatever reason it seems that nanoparticles of some plastics readily penetrate and accumulate in biological tissues. There are also chemicals that will adsorb onto these nanoparticles. This can make a chemical at a given concentration more toxic to an organism, or even potentially make something toxic that was previously not.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nanoplastic%20toxin%20...
Perhaps you need an analogy:
Consider if a company were to sell you a plastic hamburgers disguised as a real hamburgers (i.e. how advertising food products used to be before being outlawed). Now, pretend you could swallow and ingest a hamburger whole (without chewing i.e. how plankton eat). What do you think will happen to your body?
Here is a video in case you are unable to follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beUhzQAkanM
Yet another reason why it baffles me that anyone wants one of these things as a pet.
Cats are smart enough not to eat feces, theirs or anyone else's. They're also smart enough to do their best to bury their own feces so they don't stink up your place.
In contrast to cats, these dog "things" can actually be very useful, and extremely loyal [1], working animals.
[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/we-finally-know-how-the-mind-al...
Would you please consider editing to remove the snarky jabs?
> Here is a video in case you are unable to follow:
This is patronizing and rude.
And the cargo is not stuck on the bottom of the sea permanently either; it's periodically washing ashore and causing ongoing pollution and litter problems.
I think the above comment is questioning whether this container is causing `adverse' change. If not then I suppose this particular case wouldn't be classified as pollution.
The problem is not litter per se, but how it degrades over time. Shells become sand, leaves become soil. Glass becomes sea glass. Plastics become deadly blockages in animals stomachs.
It's the same as when sea urchins devour whole kelp forests, rendering parts of the sea floor totally barren. One or two urchins aren't a big deal but when they breed without limits they can completely destroy an ocean ecosystem. And so we kill them off when we need to to try to be good stewards of our planet.
The very existence of beaches at all is the result of the overwhelming dead remains of billions of diatoms and crushed shells. I have no doubt there would be a totally different ecosystem if it weren't for their remains.
Of course, I'm aware that random man-made things polluting the oceans is a bad thing in general, but in this specific case, if the plastic is just stuck there forever, is it still pollution in practical terms? The electronics inside the phones probably won't pass modern environmental standards (e.g. RoHS), so let's forget about the electronics for now and only focus on the plastic.
On the one hand, does the plastic release toxic chemicals in high enough concentration as it decomposes (slowly?)? On the other hand, does the container and its cargo somehow become a new shelter/habitat for certain species of marine life?