A rubbish way to kill off our wildlife

T'S a strange and worrying discovery.

- MIKE LOCKLEY Sunday Mercury Writer

In the heart of Birmingham or Wolverhampton - any city centre - great tits sing louder than in less built-up areas, certainly in rural settings.

And robins are beginning to clear their throats and sing at dusk and nightfall.

Both species have changed their tunes or the timing of their tunes simply to make themselves heard. And being heard is a vital part of breeding successfully.

The decibel counts undertaken by scientists is positive proof of the sound pollution, from traffic and machinery, that swamps this crowded island.

You and I have suffered it for so long that we've turned a deaf ear to it. Yet the great tit and robin show the changes in lifestyle, habits and biology that can be created by noise.

It isn’t toxic, it leaves no detectable traces in tissue and bloodstreams, you won't overdose on it, yet sound is a pollutant.

Pollution. A word that really took a hold in the early 1970s, a word that initially made global headlines courtesy of the decimation caused by DDT and a string of catastrophic oil spills at sea.

Society fights it, yet is not winning the battle.

In fact, there is not a single day when you do not battle pollution - light, sound, fumes... And in many cases the long term toll on health is not fully understood.

Britain is saturated by pollutants - and the impact on our diminishing wildlife points to the possible impact on civilisation.

The situation on land is a concern, in the seas that lap our coastlines it is a crisis, underlined by the decline of many seabird species.

So what are the pollutants that are proving a real peril?

Plastics are high on the doomwatch list, plastics have impregnated many species.

Following a plastic waste survey entitled “The Big Plastic Count”, Greenpeace released sombre statistics.