We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
Using a citizen science approach to assess nanoplastics pollution in remote high-altitude glaciers
Summary
Researchers combined high-sensitivity TD-PTR-MS (thermal desorption-proton transfer reaction-mass spectrometry) with citizen science sampling by trained mountaineers to measure nanoplastic concentrations at 14 high-altitude glacier sites in the Alps, detecting nanoplastics at concentrations of 2-80 ng/mL at 5 of 14 sites. FLEXPART trajectory modelling identified probable emission sources lying largely to the west in France, Spain, and Switzerland, with tire wear particles, polystyrene, and polyethylene as the dominant polymer types.
Abstract Nanoplastics are suspected to pollute every environment on Earth and reach very remote areas, e.g. via airborne transport. We approached the challenge of measuring environmental nanoplastics by combining high-sensitivity TD-PTR-MS (thermal desorption-proton transfer reaction-mass spectrometry) with trained mountaineers sampling high-altitude glaciers (“citizen science”). We analysed particles < 1 µm for common polymers (polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene and tire wear particles), revealing nanoplastic concentrations ranging from 2–80 ng mL− 1 at five of 14 sites. The major nanoplastic polymer types found in this study were tire wear, polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene (PE) particles (41%, 28% and 12%, respectively). FLEXPART modelling was used to reconstruct possible sources of micro- and nanoplastic emissions for those observations, appearing to lie largely to the west of the Alps, where France, Spain and Switzerland have the highest contributions.