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Geochemical Fingerprint and Stratigraphic Marker
Summary
This chapter explains how the global spread of plastic pollution — from ocean floors to mountain glaciers — makes plastic particles useful as geological markers of the Anthropocene era. The accumulation of microplastics in sediment layers provides a distinctive chemical and physical signature that will be readable in the geological record for millennia.
The ubiquitous presence of plastic pollutants in every environmental system and their distribution from abyssal plains to remote polar and mountainous glaciated regions have found their utilities to be stratigraphic markers and geochemical fingerprints of the Anthropocene era. This chapter defines these traits and utilities. A typical marker of human activity is the overwhelming amount of plastics produced, used, and thrown into the environment as wastes. Owing to the magnitude of production, the usage, and the presence of plastics in every environmental niche, the present era is referred to as the Plasticene era, and the sediment layer with microplastics distinguishes itself with a unique geochemical fingerprint and marks the commencement of the Anthropocene boundary in stratigraphic records.