A study published this week in Environmental Science & Technology found that 74 metric tons of microplastics dropped out of the atmosphere onto Auckland, New Zealand, in 2020. This is the equivalent of 3 million plastic bottles.
The peer-reviewed study is the first to calculate the total mass of airborne microplastics in a city. and indicates that researchers may be significantly underestimating their global prevalence.
Over the course of nine weeks, two sampling locations in Auckland, New Zealand, were used in this study to investigate the atmospheric deposition of microplastics (MPs).
The Auckland study found that in 2020, the average number of plastics in the air was 4,885 per square meter in one day, comparatively 771 in a 2020 study in London, 275 in a 2019 study in Hamburg, and 110 in a 2016 study in Paris. The inconsistency is generally a direct result of the Auckland study’s incorporation of more modest size ranges, which were not part of past research.
AP/Representational Image
Jump To
What is microplastic?
The term “microplastics” refers to tiny plastic particles. They are officially defined as plastics with a diameter of less than five millimeters (0.2 inches) and are insoluble in water.
Microplastics are an outcome of commercial product development and the breakdown of larger plastics. Microplastics can be found in personal care products, such as microbeads in facial scrubs, abrasion of tires caused by driving, and the laundering of synthetic clothes. They also originate from the degradation of larger plastic articles like plastic bags, bottles or fishing nets.
How are they harmful?
Microplastics like other types of plastic are difficult to break down into harmless molecules. The decomposition of plastics can take hundreds or thousands of years and impact the environment. Microplastics can be seen in the sand on beaches that adversely affects marine animals.
Unsplash/Representational Image
Chemicals that are used as raw materials or additives in plastics may leach into the environment during manufacturing. These chemicals are also absorbed by animals and people, leached into food and released into the air when plastic is burned. It has been discovered that plastic-related chemicals are present in all living things, including humans, animals, and marine and bird species.
Microplastics have been found harmful to human cells by causing allergic reactions and sometimes even cell death. In 2020, researchers have found microplastic particles in the human placenta, an organ created in the uterus during the pregnancy of unborn children.
A warning bell
The report said how “flowing into the oceans via wastewater and tainting deep-sea ecosystems, and they’re (microplastics) even ejecting out of the water and blowing onto land in sea breezes.”
New Zealand is not the only country that finds the study’s findings shocking. A similar study, titled “Atmospheric microplastic deposition in an urban environment and an evaluation of transport,” was published in 2020. It found that over 750 microplastic particles fell over the same patch of land in London.
Unsplash/Representational Image
The Auckland study also found that on windy days, there were more microplastics in the device than on any other day. Joel Rindelaub, a Chemist at the University of Auckland told ScienceAlert, “the production of airborne microplastics from breaking waves could be a key part of the global transport of microplastics.”
He added, “And it could help explain how some microplastics get into the atmosphere and are carried to remote places, like here in New Zealand.”
Professor Anoop Chauhan, a respiratory specialist with Portsmouth Hospital Trust, told the Daily Mail that “having these particles in your body can cause stress and changes in metabolism, it can affect immunity, the ability to fight infections, it can affect your reproductive capacity and potentially it could be carcinogenic.”
Watch this video explainer:
For more on explainers, news and current affairs from around the world, please visit universo virtual News.