How your car sheds microplastics into the ocean thousands of miles away

Millions of tonnes of nanoplastics are polluting the ocean

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Researchers highlight that millions of tonnes of nanoplastics smaller than a human hair are polluting the ocean, with these particles capable of passing through cell walls and entering the marine food web with poorly understood consequences.

Effects of Microplastics

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While research on microplastic effects in freshwater systems remains limited, studies of marine ecosystems demonstrate clear biological consequences across multiple levels of the food web, from individual organisms to ecosystem function. Translating these marine findings to rivers and lakes is critical for establishing the full scope of microplastic harm in the freshwater environments that humans depend on for drinking water and fisheries.

Far more microplastics floating in oceans than thought

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A new sampling method revealed that southern ocean microplastic concentrations are 37 times higher than previously estimated, suggesting that existing models have dramatically underestimated the scale of plastic pollution in Earth's most remote marine environments.

Microplastics in the Environment

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This review provided a broad overview of microplastics as environmental pollutants arising from industrialization, examining their origins from larger plastic fragmentation and their behavior across multiple environmental compartments. The review contextualizes how the plastics economy has created a self-perpetuating pollution cycle in which today's consumer goods become tomorrow's pervasive contaminants in air, water, food, and human tissue.

Our Microplastic Problem