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Microplastics are everywhere. These tiny pieces of plastic can be found throughout the oceans, infiltrating the animals they contain, the food we eat, and even our children.
The proliferation extends from the highest peak in the world to the beginning of life itself. Even the remoteness of Earth’s polar regions offers no shelter from the storm, and new research helps explain where this endless flood of microplastic debris is coming from.
In a new study led by ocean pollution researcher Peter Ross of the Ocean Wise Conservation Association in Canada, scientists analyzed the distribution of microplastics in the Arctic Ocean, sampling the pollutants in near-surface seawater at 71 sites in the European and North American Arctic. including the North Pole.
In addition to sampling near the surface, collecting microplastics at depths of 3 to 8 meters (10 to 26 feet), the researchers also sampled much shallower depths in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and Canada, collecting microplastics at depths. as low as 1,015 meters (3,330 feet) in the water column.
While microplastics are already known to have penetrated the most remote corners of the world, the mechanisms underlying their distribution and the scale of contamination remain unclear, the researchers say.
Here, the team used Fourier transform infrared spectrometry to confirm an average count across the Arctic of about 40 microplastic particles per cubic meter of ocean water, the vast majority being microplastic fibers (92.3 percent), of which almost three-quarters (73.3 percent) were polyester.
But that is not all.
“Particle abundance was correlated with longitude, with nearly three times more particles in the eastern Arctic compared to the west,” the researchers write in their paper, and in terms of pollutants in polyester, “a shift from east to west in infrared signatures [points] to a possible erosion of the fibers far from the source “.
In summary, the researchers believe that polyester fibers are shipped to the eastern Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean and possibly also via atmospheric transport from the south, breaking into smaller pieces as they degrade and move towards the western Arctic. .
The culprit, the team suggests, is textile fibers in domestic wastewater, with polyester and synthetic fibers that are shed from clothing when washed, before moving into waterways that carry pollutants into the ocean.
According to the researchers’ estimates, a single piece of clothing can release millions of fibers during a typical household wash, and wastewater treatment plants can release more than 20 billion microfibers a year.
“These estimates follow reports of a large number of microfibers shed from various textiles in household laundry and a predominance of synthetic microfibers in municipal wastewater,” the authors explain.
“While the additional inventories will undoubtedly add to the source identification of the Arctic MPs, we suggest that the combined historical release of wastewater from Europe, America and Asia warrants additional scientific scrutiny.”
That is to put it mildly. As Ross explains in a 2018 video, it is imperative that we track where microplastic contamination is coming from, if we are ever to have a chance to stop this insidious threat.
“The more we look for microplastics in our environmental samples, the more we realize … we’re in a cloud of plastic dust,” says Ross. “Wherever we look, we find microplastics … microplastics are everywhere.”
Findings are reported in Communications from nature.
