Scientists have just calculated how much microplastics are in our atmosphere. This number is absolutely shocking
A new estimate shows that land sources throw 600 quadrillion pieces of microplastics into the atmosphere every year.
Microplastics travel by air and sea and reach even remote areas.
Ben Stansell/Getty Images
Microplastics are widespread, found everywhere on Earth, from the Sahara Desert to Arctic sea ice caps. Yet despite the ubiquity of these plastic particles, scientists have struggled to determine how many of them there are in our atmosphere.
Now a new estimate has been published Nature Suggested land source Release approximately 600 quadrillion (600,000,000,000,000,000) microplastic particles into the atmosphere Each year, that’s about 20 times the number of particles contributed by the oceans (about 26 quadrillion).
The average concentration of microplastics is 0.08 particles per cubic meter (m)3) above ground and 0.003 particles per m3 Over the ocean, the study found.
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These estimates are 100 to 10,000 times lower than previous accountings of atmospheric microplastics — a discrepancy that the researchers behind the new study say emphasizes the need for better global measures of these pollutants.
“We knew that the uncertainties in existing emissions estimates were very large,” says Andreas Stohl, senior author of the study and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Vienna. “They are still large even after our study, but we can at least reduce the range of uncertainty, especially when it comes to the importance of land-based versus ocean-based emissions.”
Microplastics are any plastic particles sized between one micron and five millimeters. Easily airborne and carried over long distances by water, these tiny particles are extremely difficult to detect and almost impossible to remove from the environment.
Previous estimates have focused on accounting for microplastics resulting from human activity or directly measuring their concentration in the air in any given area. But these measures are highly variable: for example, off the southeast coast of China, atmospheric microplastics Estimate ranges from 0.004 to 190 particles per meter3. To try to come up with a more global estimate, Stohl and his team compiled 2,782 measurements collected at 283 locations around the world.
The researchers hope that these findings will serve as a baseline for future studies of global microplastic levels, including new measures capable of detecting particles even smaller than those.
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