The young birds in the study had impaired kidney function and raised cholesterol levels, plus reduced body mass, wing length, head and bill length.

“A seabird might look fine but it can’t tell you it’s unwell or suffering,” says Jennifer Lavers of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at University of Tasmania in Australia. Lavers is lead author of the study in Environmental Science & Technology looking at the non-lethal impacts of plastic ingestion.

“We decided to treat them like humans and do a blood panel to find out how they’re doing,” Lavers says in an interview.

Seabirds are not doing well in general. They are declining faster than any other bird group and plastics in the oceans are believed