"Microplastic pollution" refers to very tiny pieces of plastic that are polluting the environment. These small bits of plastic come from various sources such as broken down plastic bottles, clothing fibers, and microbeads in certain cosmetic products. They can be harmful to wildlife, ecosystems, and even humans when they end up in water bodies or soil.
Full definition
Barrows has directed
global microplastic pollution research since 2013, developing the most diverse and largest known dataset available to - date.
This means they could
spread microplastic pollution throughout the marine ecosystem, by carrying microplastics from the surface down to deeper waters, affecting deep - sea organisms.
The minimum
average microplastics pollution was found in the stretch between Basel and Mainz (202,900 particles per square kilometer), a medium average at Bad Honnef, Köln - Porz and Leverkusen (714,053) and the highest average in the Rhine - Ruhr metropolitan area (2,333,665).
Between Basel and Rotterdam, the Rhine has one of the
highest microplastics pollution so far measured in rivers, with the Rhine - Ruhr metropolitan area showing peak numbers of up to four times the average.
There is a lack of data on the levels of microplastics present in the Norwegian environment and there is an urgent need to evaluate the extent of
microplastic pollution around the coast of Norway and Spitsbergen.
But it turns out that compost collected from homes and grocery stores is a previously unknown source
of microplastic pollution, a new study April 4 in Science Advances reports.
In fact, terrestrial
microplastic pollution is much higher than marine microplastic pollution — an estimate of four to 23 times more, depending on the environment.
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Microplastic pollution has been in the news recently, with several governments planning a ban on microbeads used in cosmetics and detergents» says Alina Wieczorek from the National University of Ireland, Galway and lead author of the study.