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Plastic dust in the wind
Summary
A research summary reports that the majority of airborne microplastics come not from the ocean but from road dust and other land-based sources, based on atmospheric sampling and transport modeling. This finding shifts attention to terrestrial sources of airborne plastic particles that people breathe every day.
Microplastics Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the environment, the endmember being microplastics generated from the breakdown of larger, more primary pieces. Brahney et al. investigated the sources of atmospheric microplastics using a combination of observations and atmospheric transport models. They found that the majority of microplastics in the air are derived from the fragmentation of plastics on roadways, with much smaller fractions coming from oceans and agricultural soils. This finding underscores the importance of controlling primary plastic pollution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118 , e2020719118 (2021).