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Microplastic shape affects travel distance
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Researchers found that microplastic shape significantly influences atmospheric transport distance, with fibre and complex-shaped particles travelling farther than spherical ones assumed in most models, helping explain the detection of microplastics in remote locations such as Antarctica and Mount Fuji.
Microplastics have turned up in some of the world’s most remote places , such as Antarctica and the summit of Mount Fuji . Yet models of atmospheric transport haven’t been able to fully explain how these bits of plastic stray so far from the people who produced them . A new study finds that the shape of microplastics influences the distances they fly ( Environ. Sci. Technol. 2023, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c08209 ). “You find these microplastics worldwide, even far away from likely sources,” says Andreas Stohl, a meteorologist at the University of Vienna and one of the study’s authors. Most of these microplastics seem to be fibers or relatively complex shapes, he says. “But most models assume that particles are spherical.” Researchers have tools that work fairly well for predicting the transport of small particles with lengths of around 10 μm. But some microplastics can stretch up to 5 mm in
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