A research has found that nearly 269,000 tons of plastic pollution may be floating in the world's oceans.
Microplastic pollution is found in varying concentrations throughout the oceans, but estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics, both micro and macroplastic, lack sufficient data to support them.
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To better estimate the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world's oceans, scientists from six countries contributed data from 24 expeditions collected over a six-year period from 2007-2013 across all five sub-tropical gyres, coastal Australia, Bay of Bengal, and the Mediterranean Sea.
The data included information about microplastics collected using nets and large plastic debris from visual surveys, which were then used to calibrate an ocean model of plastic distribution.
![An Eco-Island Created From Plastic Bottles: The Manmade Hawaii]( "An Eco-Island Created From Plastic Bottles: The Manmade Hawaii")
A team of Dutch scientists are planning to make an island the size of Hawaii entirely from 44million kg of plastic waste.
Based on the data and model, the authors of the study estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing nearly 269,000 tons in the world's oceans. Large plastics appear to be abundant near coastlines, degrading into microplastics in the 5 subtropical gyres, and that the smallest microplastics were present in more remote regions, such as the subpolar gyres, which the authors did not expect.
The distribution of the smallest microplastics in remote regions of the ocean may suggest that gyres act as 'shredders' of large plastic items into microplastics, after which they eject them across the ocean.
Researcher Marcus Eriksen from Five Gyres Institute said that their findings show that the garbage patches in the middle of the five subtropical gyres are not the final resting places for the world's floating plastic trash. The endgame for micro-plastic is interactions with entire ocean ecosystems.
The study was published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Source: ANI
An Eco-Island Created From Plastic Bottles: The Manmade Hawaii
A team of Dutch scientists are planning to make an island the size of Hawaii entirely from 44million kg of plastic waste.
Advertisement
Based on the data and model, the authors of the study estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing nearly 269,000 tons in the world's oceans. Large plastics appear to be abundant near coastlines, degrading into microplastics in the 5 subtropical gyres, and that the smallest microplastics were present in more remote regions, such as the subpolar gyres, which the authors did not expect.
The distribution of the smallest microplastics in remote regions of the ocean may suggest that gyres act as 'shredders' of large plastic items into microplastics, after which they eject them across the ocean.
Researcher Marcus Eriksen from Five Gyres Institute said that their findings show that the garbage patches in the middle of the five subtropical gyres are not the final resting places for the world's floating plastic trash. The endgame for micro-plastic is interactions with entire ocean ecosystems.
The study was published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Source: ANI
University of Toronto Chemists Identify Role of Soil in Pollution Control
The fact long known is that, air pollution caused by cars and trucks, solvent use and even plants is reduced when broken down by naturally occurring compounds that act like detergents of atmosphere.
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