Out of sight, but no longer out of mind: Microplastics as a global pollutant

Derelict fishing gear, packing straps, and assorted plastic items have long killed and maimed turtles, seals, whales, and birds, and generated gruesome and highly visible evidence of the impacts associated with marine litter. However, the extent to which smaller and smaller pieces of debris, notably microplastics, permeate our streams, lakes, and oceans has only recently become more evident.A handful of reports on small plastic particles in the ocean appeared in the 1960s and 1970s (Carpenter and Smith 1972), but the term “microplastics” was not coined until 2004, when microscopic examination of beach sediment samples in the United Kingdom and northern Europe launched a new era of discovery (Thompson et al. 2004). Since then, dozens of studies have established that no part of the world is immune to contamination by microplastics, with these anthropogenic contaminants being readily detected in air, arctic sea ice, subsurface seawater, and even the deep seafloor (Obbard et al. 2014; Woodall et al. 2014).