The great lint migration

For many people who enjoy exploring the outdoors, a jacket made of polyester fleece is a wardrobe staple. The fluffy material is warm, lightweight, long-wearing, and often made from recycled soda bottles. But researchers are increasingly worried that fibers from fleece and other synthetic garments are making journeys of their own to soils, rivers, and oceans where they can damage wildlife and even end up in the human food supply. Scientists have dubbed these escapees “microfibers” because they are commonly only tens of microns wide and millimeters long. They are a tiny, often invisible, subset of the larger class of microplastics, which include plastic beads that enhance the scrubbing action of some personal care products. Another source of microplastics is small particles that come from larger, degraded plastic items. Microplastics are a pollution problem because they can be mistaken for food by marine life both big and small. They can