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Researchers find microplastics in clouds
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Scientists found microplastics in cloud water collected from two Japanese mountains, identifying nine types of plastic particles at concentrations of 7-14 pieces per liter. This discovery suggests microplastics may travel long distances through the atmosphere via clouds, potentially spreading pollution far from its original sources.
Microplastics have infiltrated nearly every corner of the globe. A new study suggests they’ve made their way into the clouds. Researchers identified nine types of microplastics in cloud water that they collected from the summit and foothills of Mount Fuji and the summit of Mount Oyama, both of which sit southwest of Tokyo ( Environ. Chem. Lett. 2023, DOI: 10.1007/s10311-023-01626-x ). The number of microplastic particles that the researchers found in the cloud water was low—between 7 and 14 pieces per liter on average—but that is most likely an underestimate, says Hiroshi Okochi, an environmental chemist at Waseda University and an author of the study. He explains that the collection equipment he and his team used was not originally developed to sample microplastics. Even so, “it’s a unique dataset which fills in some knowledge gaps regarding microplastics environmental distributions,” says Denise Mitrano, an environmental chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute
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