Who doesn’t love an ocean breeze… full of salt… and… contaminants?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Plastic pollution is everywhere. In our oceans, on land… even in our air!
Enter Daniel B. Shaw and team from University of Strathclyde in Scotland. They studied how microplastics move from oceans into the atmosphere through sea spray. Specifically, they modeled how crashing waves launch tiny plastic particles into the air!
And? Oceans can release nearly ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND TONS of microplastics into the atmosphere yearly! Winds can then carry these particles across continents before depositing them back onto land.
So next time you’re at the beach, remember to recycle.
There’s no need to be salty about it.
Reference: Daniel B Shaw, Qi Li, Janine K Nunes, Luc Deike, Ocean emission of microplastic, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 10, October 2023, pgad296, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad296