11 Billion Pieces Of Plastic Are Ridding Corals With Disease Summary

In the article “11 Billion Pieces of Plastic Are Ridding Corals with Disease”, Ed Yong interviews two microbiologist, Joleah Lamb and Rebecca Vega Thurber, on how plastic is destroying our coral reefs. Lamb states that plastic that sits on top of coral can cause disease to take over that part of the coral and spread. A study that was performed by Lamb showed that on average 4% of coral is affected by a disease, but 89% of coral that comes into contact with plastic is affected. There are many different diseases that affect the coral covered with plastic because plastic creates a dark place, and it also cuts the coral leaving open wounds on the coral. Coral that has arms and branches that fish like to hide in are more at risk to become affected
He writes at a high school reading level which means that the average American can read the article and understand with ease. Yong doesn’t expect the reader to have any scientific background therefore, he doesn’t write in any scientific wording. When Yong begins to discuss the different kinds of disease that coral can get from plastic he not tells the reader how the plastic causes the disease, but also what it does to the coral and why the plastic causes the diseases. By writing this article for a general audience Yong is making a point that he wants people to know about the problem and start helping to fix it. If Yong was writing the article for a group of scientists then he would use a much different form of language and he would want the solution to be something more than cutting back the amount of plastic they use. He would probably want them to come up with a cure for the diseases that the coral is getting. He also displays using Pathos in this situation too because he is trying to guilt you into doing something. He uses the information that he gives you to motivate you to begin doing something about
I believe that Yong using the information that he obtained from Joleah Lamb and Rebecca Vega Thurber was a very perceive essay. This is due to his element of making the article easy to follow and engaging the reader to continue reading. If you fail to grab you audience’s attention at the beginning or you lose them part way through, the readers are missing the whole purpose of the article by not reading the end, which is what they can do to help. You never want your read to become so confused that they stop reading and that is what Yong did very good at not doing. The other reason that Yong wrote such a strong article is that he wrote so that anyone that had high school schooling can understand. This is a very important part of writing a article that you want people to read because if they feel that it is out of there level of reading the are not going to put in the time so that the can understand it, they will simply just not read the article at all. Overall, Yong does a great job at getting the message out that people need to cut back on the amount of plastic they use and how they dispose of the plastic they do