Microplastics everywhere… Blow’n in the Wind…

Here is an article in ARS Technica about an article in Nature Geoscience (2019) that talks about microplastics in the French The Pyrenees Mountains, a pristine place, except for, well, plastic!

The researchers made extremely controlled efforts to assure that they were not contaminating the samples gathered. But the plastics are coming in on the wind, and coming down (mainly, it seems) in perpetration. 

If microplastics are everywhere, then our impacts on the planet are far more, and far more prevasive than anyone has predicted. The ARS Technica article by Cathleen O’Grady
– 4/22/2019, also talks about the significant amount of plastics produced each year that is unaccounted for in landfills, recycling and oceans. 


When you read the original article, remember the whole biomagnification thing. That’s where fish each plants and plankton with plastics, Bigger fish eat those fish, and BIGGER animals like sharks, bears and humans, eat the biggest fish. The heavy metals, plastics and more will build up and up as they go up the food chain. And they tend to be retained at the highest order.

Sources: Nature Geoscience, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0335-5  (About DOIs).