Mon, 03 Feb 2025 14:27:27 EST
Consider This Sentence
The following sentence occurs in The Guardian on Apple News. “Microplastics contamination is widespread in seafood sampled in a recent study, adding to growing evidence of the dangerous substances’ ubiquity in the nation’s food system, and a growing threat to human health.”
Overlong. Clumsy.
The writer appears to intend that the final phrase of the sentence is a second object of, adding to growing evidence of, but the final phrase seems extraneous and confuses because of the distance of the phrase from the preposition and because of the unnecessary comma that precedes the phrase. The phrase is also redundant in meaning.
The portion of the sentence after the main clause is editorial in nature. Plastics contain substances that are known to cause adverse health effects, but the scientific study of the health effects of microplastics in our diet is ongoing.
My rewrite: “Microplastics were widespread in seafood sampled in a recent study, adding to the evidence of their ubiquity in our food sources.”