New Delhi, May 29 -- For many people, "plastic pollution" calls to mind pictures of turtles and other marine life drowning in single-use plastic bottles and discarded fishing nets. My own research looks at how the same story is playing out on land.

Plastics are increasingly found in small mammals, insects and the soil. But how it moves through these ecosystems - and the damage it might be doing - is still poorly understood.

My own research into this started during my masters degree. I wanted to find out if plastic pollution was affecting UK mammals - and the results were startling.

Colleagues and I first looked at the faeces of a range of small UK mammals. We then used a special machine that detects infrared light to identify differen...