Amid severe marine pollution caused by plastic waste, microplastics are rapidly emerging as a negative factor in polluting food. In the meantime, it is pointed out that some of Korea’s national snacks are not free from microplastics. Meanwhile, according to authorities and industries on the 19th, attention is being paid to the move to establish microplastics standards and manage their potential harm.

Recently, 'Health Chosun' commissioned the Korea Institute of Analytical Science to analyze the microplastics of Nongshim shrimp snack and Binggrae crab snack. As a result, since the weight of a bag of snacks is 90g of shrimp chips and 70g of blue crabs, each bag of snacks contains about 1,170 microplastic and 1,470 microplastic. While there were high concerns that microplastic is accumulated in seafood, especially crustaceans, the results proved it to be true.

However, after close inspection, The Korea Food and Drug Safety Evaluation Institute of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety annouced on the 11th that the amount of microplastic and its exposure to domestic distributed foods is not at a level of concern. In addition, it was confirmed that in the case of seaweed, much of the microplastics were removed when washed more than twice.