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2019’s top research, by the numbers
Summary
This news summary highlighted that people who drink exclusively bottled water consume an estimated 90,000 additional microplastic pieces per year compared to tap water drinkers, making it a widely cited statistic in the debate over drinking water plastic contamination.
90,000: The number of additional microplastic pieces a person would consume in a year if meeting daily water needs exclusively through bottled water (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b01517) 1.8 × 1022: The half-life of xenon-124 in years, making it the longest ever directly measured (Nature 2019, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1124-4) 100 µm: The length of the smallest optical spectrometer (shown), which was made from a single nanowire of cadmium sulfide and cadmium selenide (Science 2019, DOI: 10.1126/science.aax8814) >14,000: The number of carbon nanotubes used to make a microprocessor (shown) for the first nanotube computer capable of running simple programs (Nature 2019, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1493-8) <5%: The percentage of lithium-ion batteries (various types shown) that are currently recycled worldwide. In 2019, scientists and consumers scrutinized recycling practices for batteries and other materials, like glass and plastic. Source: International Energy Agency. 46: The number of days a machine-learning algorithm took to identify a drug