Express & Star

LETTER: The plastic pollutant that gets forgotten

It seems that most people are doing their bit against polluting the earth except for some councils who insist in cutting down and digging up our supplies of oxygen.

Published
Warning over releasing balloons

They say they are trying to find ways of cutting the exhaust pollutants down.

When I was young a few years ago the air pollutants were heavy with industrial smoke and fume output when you seriously could not see your hand in front of your face.

One morning when I was doing my paper round, I had to cross a main road and I could not see my feet on the edge of the pavement.

The air was quickly cleaned because of many trees and green land.

Now the trees are chopped down and green land dug up in the name of progress and population explosion.

Then we have the plastic pollution, you cannot walk down a road without seeing plastic bottles, plastic rappers and McDonald rubbish.

Yet there is one plastic pollutant we seem to forget that drops all over the world, on land and sea in their hundreds - balloons, hundreds of plastic balloons that are let up for birthdays, fairs, fetes and for many other reasons.

We let them up but no one knows where they will come down but they kill and destroy wildlife like any other plastic or pollutant.

Please before you let up another balloon, think, where will it come down, what can it kill.

Norman D Caddick

Coseley