Microplastics

Microplastics are fragments of any type of plastic less than 5 mm in length, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European Chemicals Agency. They enter natural ecosystems from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, and industrial processes.

Our plastic pollution problem has become so bad that microplastics are now embedded in the regular cycles of the atmosphere, circulating around the planet like oxygen or water, according to a new study.

Plastic particles sent up into the air from ocean spray and road surfaces travel across continents and reaching the most remote spots on Earth, according to a mix of sampling and modeling done by researchers.

Much of this plastic appears to have been circulating through our ecosystems for a long time – highlighting just how much of a massive clean up operation we've got on our hands if we're to reverse the plastic tide.

"We found a lot of legacy plastic pollution everywhere we looked," says geological scientist Janice Brahney from Utah State University. "It travels in the atmosphere and it deposits all over the world."

"This plastic is not new from this year. It's from what we've already dumped into the environment over several decades."

Between December 2017 and January 2019, researchers collected 313 samples of airborne microplastics from 11 different sites across the western US. They found that 84 percent of the plastic particles came from road dust, 11 percent originated from sea spray, 5 percent came from agricultural soil, and 0.4 percent was put down to population sources.

In other words, this is mainly plastic that has been ground down on roads or whipped up from garbage patches in the ocean. Microplastic pollution isn't just concentrated around urban areas – it's getting everywhere, carried on the wind.  READ MORE