A recent study carried by the National Sun Yat-sen University has found
microplastics in most of the batches of marine dried fish it studied from
seven Asian countries - suggesting a potential health risk.

The research team studied 14 batches of marine dried fish from seven Asian
countries to see how contaminated they were by microplastics.

It found that a type of round herring species caught along Japan's
southeastern coast was the most contaminated of all the samples studied.

It is attributing the result to East Asian waters around Japan being hotspots
for microplastics, describing them as having a microplastics concentration
one order of magnitude higher than the rest of the world's oceans.

According to the study, 75.9-per cent of the samples of round-herring species
from Japan contained microplastics.

That far outpaced the next most contaminated dried fish studied, the Pacific
sandlance from China, for which 40-per cent of the samples contained
microplastics.