Scientists find micro plastics in Arctic
Thursday, 15 August 2019
Scientists say they have found an abundance of tiny plastic particles in Arctic snow, indicating that so-called micro plastics are being sucked into the atmosphere and carried long distances to some of the remotest corners of the planet.
The researchers examined snow collected from sites in the Arctic, northern Germany, the Bavarian and Swiss Alps and the North Sea island of Heligoland with a process specially designed to analyse their samples in a lab.
'While we did expect to find micro plastics, the enormous concentrations surprised us,' Melanie Bergmann, a researcher at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, said.
Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
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Previous studies have found microplastics - which are created when man-made materials break apart and are defined as pieces smaller than 5 millimetres - in the air of Paris, Tehran and Dongguan, China.
The research demonstrated the fragments may become airborne in a way similar to dust, pollen and fine particulate matter from vehicle exhausts.
While there's growing concern about the environmental impact of micro plastics, scientists have yet to determine what effect, if any, the minute particles have on humans or wildlife.
Bergmann, who co-authored the study, said the highest concentrations of micro plastics were found in the Bavarian Alps, with one sample having more than 150,000 particles per 1 litre.
Although the Arctic samples were less contaminated, the third-highest concentration in the samples the researchers analysed - 14,000 particles per litre - came from an ice floe in the Fram Strait off eastern Greenland, she said.
On average, the researchers found 1800 particles per litre in the samples taken from that region.
The authors suggested that the airborne distribution of microscopic plastic particles has so far been neglected as a source of contamination and should be monitored in standard air pollution monitoring schemes.
'We really need to know what effects micro plastics have on humans, especially if inhaled with the air that we breathe,' Bergmann said.