A plastic mist or rain of microplastics is not a thing of research or theory; it is a reality that is raising concerns about its negative impact on the human body.
According to a Bloomberg report, some 74 metric tons of microplastics dropped out of the atmosphere onto the New Zealand city of Auckland in 2020, according to a study published this week in Environmental Science & Technology - the equivalent of 3 million plastic bottles.
The peer-reviewed study is the first to calculate the total mass of microplastics in a city's air, and its findings suggest researchers may be dramatically undercounting the global prevalence of airborne microplastics.
This study investigated the atmospheric deposition of microplastics (MPs) in Auckland, New Zealand, from two sampling sites over a 9-week period.
In one square metre in one day, the Auckland study found that the average number of airborne plastics was 4,885 in 2020. That compares with 771 in a 2020 study in London, 275 in a 2019 study in Hamburg, and 110 in a 2016 study in Paris. The discrepancy is largely because of the Auckland study's inclusion of smaller size ranges, which were not part of previous research.
According to the study, microplastics are a major issue because they are now found in our rainwater, food chain, and oceans, where 15 to 51 trillion particles are estimated to drift near the surface.
The term "microplastic" was coined only 18 years ago, but it already appears to be a major issue for humanity, and it is found almost everywhere.
ScienceAlert reported that, each year, the average human consumes an estimated 74,000 particles of plastic with unknown health effects. In March of this year, scientists announced they'd found microplastics flowing through our very veins.
