This has led to growing concerns regarding the environmental and health implications of these tiny fragments. Japanese researchers embarked on a mission to scale the heights of Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama, collecting water sample from the clouds that shroud these peaks. Their findings were nothing short of alarming, with the analysis of these samples revealing a significant presence of microplastics.
Shockingly, each litre of cloud water contained between 6.7 to 13.9 pieces of these plastics. The researchers issued a caution that these microplastics could potentially fall back to Earth as ‘plastic rain’, posing a significant threat to the natural environment. In addition, if these microplastics ascend to the upper atmosphere, exposure to sunlight could initiate their degradation, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions…Story continues…
Source: Microplastics in clouds: a new environmental challenge?
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Critics:
Microplastics are fragments of any type of plastic less than 5 mm (0.20 in) in length, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Chemicals Agency. They cause pollution by entering natural ecosystems from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, food packaging, and industrial processes.
The term macroplastics is used to differentiate microplastics from larger plastic waste, such as plastic bottles or bigger pieces of plastics. Two classifications of microplastics are currently recognized. Primary microplastics include any plastic fragments or particles that are already 5.0 mm in size or less before entering the environment. These include microfibers from clothing, microbeads, plastic glitter and plastic pellets (also known as nurdles).
Secondary microplastics arise from the degradation (breakdown) of larger plastic products through natural weathering processes after entering the environment. Such sources of secondary microplastics include water and soda bottles, fishing nets, plastic bags, microwave containers, tea bags and tire wear. Both types are recognized to persist in the environment at high levels, particularly in aquatic and marine ecosystems, where they cause water pollution.
35% of all ocean microplastics come from textiles/clothing, primarily due to the erosion of polyester, acrylic, or nylon-based clothing, often during the washing process. However, microplastics also accumulate in the air and terrestrial ecosystems. Because plastics degrade slowly (often over hundreds to thousands of years), microplastics have a high probability of ingestion, incorporation into, and accumulation in the bodies and tissues of many organisms.
The toxic chemicals that come from both the ocean and runoff can also biomagnify up the food chain. In terrestrial ecosystems, microplastics have been demonstrated to reduce the viability of soil ecosystems and reduce weight of earthworms. The cycle and movement of microplastics in the environment are not fully known, but research is currently underway to investigate the phenomenon.
Deep layer ocean sediment surveys in China (2020) show the presence of plastics in deposition layers far older than the invention of plastics, leading to suspected underestimation of microplastics in surface sample ocean surveys. Microplastics have also been found in the high mountains, at great distances from their source. Microplastics have also been found in human blood, though their effects are largely unknown.
The term “microplastics” was introduced in 2004 by Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom. Microplastics are common in our world today. In 2014, it was estimated that there are between 15 and 51 trillion individual pieces of microplastic in the world’s oceans, which was estimated to weigh between 93,000 and 236,000 metric tons.
Primary microplastics are small pieces of plastic that are purposefully manufactured.They are usually used in facial cleansers and cosmetics, or in air blasting technology. In some cases, their use in medicine as vectors for drugs was reported.Microplastic “scrubbers”, used in exfoliating hand cleansers and facial scrubs, have replaced traditionally used natural ingredients, including ground almond shells, oatmeal, and pumice.
Primary microplastics have also been produced for use in air blasting technology. This process involves blasting acrylic, melamine, or polyester microplastic scrubbers at machinery, engines, and boat hulls to remove rust and paint. As these scrubbers are used repeatedly until they diminish in size and their cutting power is lost, they often become contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, and lead.
Although many companies have committed to reducing the production of microbeads, there are still many bioplastic microbeads that also have a long degradation life cycle similar to normal plastic. After the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, the use of microbeads in toothpaste and other rinse-off cosmetic products has been discontinued in the US, however since 2015 many industries have instead shifted toward using FDA-approved “rinse-off” metallized-plastic glitter as their primary abrasive agent.
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