not even The Arctic Ocean is immune to the constant increase of microplastic pollution. In a new study that analyzed core samples of sediment, the researchers quantified how many particles had been deposited since the early 1930s. As scientists have shown elsewhere, the team found that microplastic pollution in the Arctic is increasing exponentially and with the growth of plastic production—now amounting to a trillion pounds a year, with global plastic waste. expected to triple to 2060.
These researchers analyzed seawater and sediments in the western part of the Arctic Ocean, which covers 13% of its total area. But in that area alone, they calculated that 210,000 tons of microplastics, or 463 million pounds, had accumulated in water, sea ice and sediments formed since the 1930s. In their study, published last week in the magazine scientific advance, they cataloged 19 synthetic polymers in three forms: flakes, fibers, and sheets. That reflects a Dizziness array of microplastic sources, including fragments from broken bottles and bags and microfibers from synthetic clothing.
Overall, the team found that microplastic levels were doubling in sediments in the Arctic Ocean every 23 years. That reflects a research in advance of ocean sediments off the coast of Southern California, where concentrations double every 15 years. Other researchers have found an exponential increase in pollution in urban lake sediments.
Lead author Seung-Kyu Kim, a marine scientist at Incheon National University, told WIRED via email that the problem is likely to continue to get worse. Kim writes: “The input of microplastics into the Arctic has increased exponentially over the past decades, at an annual rate of 3%. “The 8.4% annual increase in the mass production of plastic—along with inefficient waste management systems—is projected to increase the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans over the next few decades, and so the amount of plastic that goes into the Arctic will increase proportionally.”
The atmosphere, too, is increasingly contaminated with microplastics. According to one calculation, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of plastic bottles decomposed may fall into the United States alone. ONE learn of a peatland area in the Pyrenees found that in the 1960s, less than five microplastics in the atmosphere were deposited per square meter of soil per day. Now it’s like 180.
Steve Allen, a microplastics researcher at the Ocean Frontiers Institute who has done research on peatlands, said: This new Arctic paper “helps show that any increase in production are suitable for the environment. “And as more research into human exposure comes to light, I believe an increase will be shown in the human body as well.”
Microplastics easily move between different environments. A previous study found 14,000 microplastics per liter of snow in the Arctic, which was blowing in from European cities. Microplastics are also reaching the North Pole by sea: When you wash your clothes, hundreds of thousands—even millions—of synthetic fibers break and flush into a wastewater treatment facility, and finally into the ocean. Ocean currents then transport the microplastics to the Arctic, where they swirl around and eventually settle into sediment. Allen and other scientists reported in May that a single recycling facility can emit 3 million pounds of microplastics per year—and those are numbers for a brand new plant that filters its runoff.
