"Microplastics are pervasive, found everywhere on Earth, from the Sahara Desert to patches of Arctic sea ice. Yet despite these plastic particles' ubiquity, scientists have struggled to determine exactly how many of them are in our atmosphere. Now a new estimate published in Nature suggests that land sources release about 600 quadrillion (600,000,000,000,000,000) microplastic particles into the atmosphere every year, about 20 times more than the number of particles contributed by oceans (about 26 quadrillion)."
"We knew that uncertainties of existing emission estimates were very large, says Andreas Stohl, senior author of the study and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Vienna. They are even still large after our study, but we could at least narrow down the uncertainty range, especially when it comes to the importance of land-based versus ocean-based emissions."
Microplastics occur globally in air and sea, from the Sahara to Arctic sea ice. New estimates place land-source atmospheric emissions at about 600 quadrillion particles per year, versus roughly 26 quadrillion from oceans. Median concentrations are about 0.08 particle per cubic meter over land and 0.003 per cubic meter over sea. The new estimates are 100 to 10,000 times lower than many previous counts, but substantial uncertainties remain. The analysis narrowed uncertainty ranges and emphasized the greater role of land-based emissions compared with ocean-based emissions. A microplastic is any plastic particle between one micron and five millimeters.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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