Ayooshi Mitra, Amity University Kolkata
One of the most pressing environmental and social issues of the twenty-first century is plastic pollution. The role of the atmosphere in transporting microplastics to remote locations has recently been highlighted in the research. A new study published in PNAS, claims that our plastic pollution problem has gotten so bad that microplastics have become embedded in the regular cycles of the atmosphere, circulating the planet like oxygen or water. Microplastic particles and fibres produced by the breakdown of improperly managed waste are now so common that they cycle through the earth like global biogeochemical cycles. By modelling the atmospheric limb of the plastic cycle, the researchers conducting the study, show that the majority of atmospheric plastics are derived from legacy production of plastics from waste that has continued to accumulate in the environment.
This year’s plastic isn’t brand new. It’s a result of what people have already dumped into the environment over a long time. Researchers collected 313 samples of airborne microplastics from 11 different locations across the western United States between December 2017 and January 2019. They discovered that road dust accounted for 84% of the plastic particles, sea spray accounted for 11%, agricultural soil accounted for 5%, and population sources accounted for 0.4 percent.
The majority of this is plastic that has been ground down on roads or whipped up from ocean garbage patches. Microplastic pollution isn’t just confined to cities; it’s dispersed throughout the world, carried by the wind. The data was then fed into a computer model to try to determine what the global pattern of atmospheric plastics might be.
Microplastics are accumulating in almost every place scientists look, including national parks, with the highest concentrations expected over the oceans. While the study’s modeling part relies on guesses and estimates to map out airborne microplastics on a global scale, there’s no doubt that these polluting particles are in the wind. Since the early 1900s, nearly 10 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced worldwide, with landfills, recycling, and incineration accounting for between 12 and 18 percent of it.
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References:
- Brahney, J., Mahowald, N., Prank, M., Cornwell, G., Klimont, Z., Matsui, H., & Prather, K. A. (2021). Constraining the atmospheric limb of the plastic cycle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(16).
- https://www.sciencealert.com/microplastics-are-now-spiralling-around-the-globe-in-the-air-we-breathe
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