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According to wired.com, travelers to national parks in the western United States (Joshua Tree National Park, Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon) expect to breathe clean air. It is a land not touched by man, considered the great history of nature conservation in America. In fact, there is an invisible evil floating in the air from the sky: microplastic particles, small pieces of plastic (less than 5 mm long), fragments of plastic bottles and microfiber of our clothes: all these pollutants that enter the Earth’s atmospheric systems are deposited in nature. in nature.
Scientists wrote about their terrifying discovery in the journal Science. For 14 months, they collected samples of rainwater and air and calculated that more than 1,000 tons of microplastic particles fall into eleven protected areas in the western United States each year. And that would equal more than 120 million. Plastic water bottles.
“We just did such research in protected areas in the west, which account for only 6 percent. The entire area of the United States,” said Janice Brahney, an environmental scientist at Utah State University who led the study. “That number is so high that it is shocking.”
The data from this study only confirms an increasingly dire scenario: Microplastics are spreading across the world and appearing in areas that have so far been kept clean, such as the Arctic or Pyrenees. Plastic is also found in the oceans where it enters sewage and where it poisons deep ecosystems.
Plastic is carried out of the water by winds after dryness. And now, in the American West and, as you can guess, in the rest of the world, plastic is already falling from the sky in the form of plastic rain that has become the new acid rain.
Plastic rain can become a much more insidious problem than acid rain, which is a consequence of emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide into the atmosphere. However, gas scrubbers installed in power plants help capture the former, and catalysts in automobiles help control the volume of the latter. As a result, the United States and the rest of the world have been able to partially address the problem of rain acidification in recent decades.
Unfortunately, microplastics have already affected the most remote corners of nature, and there is no way to purify water, soil, or air from these particles. It’s everywhere, and we really don’t have anything like a plastic magnet that allows that plastic to be caught from the oceans.
The advantage of plastic, its hardness, also makes it a worrying pollutant. Plastic never really goes away. It breaks down into smaller particles that fall into the smallest corners of the planet. Worse still, the amount of plastic waste is projected to increase by 260 million by 2030. up to 460 million per year. tons, says consulting firm McKinsey.
The growing middle class in economically developed countries means that people will consume more, which means more plastic.
To determine the severity of the problem in the American West, scientists installed rainwater and air collectors in eleven national parks and protected areas. A “wet” bucket was installed to collect rainwater and a “dry” bucket to collect air at each location. A special sensor that captures the rain opened a “wet” bucket and closed a “dry” one. And when it was sunny, everything was done backwards: the “dry” bucket collected wind-blown microplastic particles while the “wet” one was closed.
The researchers also modeled where a particular storm came from, where they collected rainwater. They analyzed the large cities the storm traveled before releasing water, and microplastics, into its bucket.
The researchers found that 98 percent of the samples collected during the year contained microplastic particles. On average, 4 percent. In fact, the dangerous particles collected in the atmosphere were made of synthetic polymers. The particles deposited in the rainwater were larger than those brought in by the wind because air currents were carried away more easily. Microfiber particles from, for example, synthetic cloth garments accounted for 66 percent. synthetic materials detected in wet samples, and 70 percent. in dry samples.
“I was overwhelmed to find small brightly colored plastic particles in almost every sample,” said Brahney. Furthermore, the equipment used by the team of scientists was unable to count the transparent or white particles, so their result is likely to only partially reflect the actual situation.
By analyzing storms that brought wet samples of microplastics, Brahney and colleagues discovered how plastic particles travel. For example, winds can lift microplastic particles from the ground in urban areas and carry them and then throw them on the ground.
“Rain is a very effective atmosphere scrubber and washes everything in it,” explained the scientist. “As a result, there can be a lot of dust and plastic in the atmosphere, and the storm will drag everything.”
Dried particles travel longer distances. These particles are smaller, so winds easily transport them for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. In the same way, for example, the sand of the Sahara desert swells in the Amazon jungle.
“We have noticed a connection between space and atmospheric flow, suggesting that the air masses that control sediments are really high in the atmosphere,” said Brahney.
This result coincides with what other scientists are beginning to observe in other parts of the world. Small plastic particles, mostly synthetic fibers from clothing, are blown by the wind and contaminate areas that are considered extremely clean. European cities, for example, are becoming a growing source of microplastics found in the Arctic.
Another worrying surprise from this study was that 30 percent. The collected plastic particles consisted of small plastic balls, the use of which in the manufacture of cosmetic products was banned in the United States in 2015.
“We found a lot of bright colors in these particles, all the colors of the rainbow. And some of them have been found to be acrylic,” said Brahney.
Scientists speculate that the source of such particles could have been industrial paints and primers. If sprayed, plastic particles can easily enter the atmosphere where they are trapped and carried by the wind. If this is the case, the paint industry can expect the same fate as the beauty industry. However, if one of the parties prohibits such particles, the wind can easily introduce them into them.
Even more worrying is that microplastics eventually break down into nanoplastics, particles so small that scientists can’t even capture them without the proper equipment.
“I didn’t see anything smaller than four microns, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there,” said the researcher. “Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean we don’t breathe.”
Scientists don’t yet know what those inhaled particles can do for human health, but it stands to reason that they certainly won’t bring benefits. Plastic particles tend to spread their chemical components over time. They are also known to transmit microbes such as viruses and bacteria.
Scientists are only now beginning to explore what this means for other organisms. A study published earlier this year found that microplastic-affected crab hermits may have difficulty selecting new shells as they grow, which is a specific problem because such shells are critical to their survival.
J. Brahney and colleagues note that microplastics can also alter the thermal properties of the soil and how, for example, it absorbs and retains heat. Plastic can also affect the growth of microbes, your colonies. It can also affect the way water travels through the ground.
Scientists have been trying to figure out what happens to global plastic pollution, which almost “disappears” completely in the atmosphere. However, research like this shows that such pollution is not really disappearing: plastics simply become such small particles that they are transported around the world and probably circulate in different systems for many years: air, land and sea.
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