Is it just me, or is seafood getting … crunchier?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
The waves of the Atlantic carry an invisible danger – nanoplastics. These particles are tiny; about a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand.
Enter Dušan Materić and team from Utrecht University.
The team sampled waters across the North Atlantic. Nanoplastics were everywhere.
Using ocean models, researchers estimate the North Atlantic holds up to twenty seven million tons of nanoplastics. That’s like four million elephants! And they come from us. Clothing fibers. Packaging. Trash. It travels up the food chain and circles back to our plates.
The ocean feeds us. Maybe it’s time we stop feeding it plastic.
Reference: ten Hietbrink, S., Materić, D., Holzinger, R. et al. Nanoplastic concentrations across the North Atlantic. Nature 643, 412–416 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09218-1