PLASTIC MANAGEMENT PLACEBO : NEW STUDY ESSAY

TINY PLASTICS lurk in the ocean - a new study finds. Particles are small enough that they can easily enter the bodies of living creatures.

WHAT DO human brains, placentas and dolphin breath have in common? Signs of plastic pollution in the form of tiny particles known as microplastics.

The ocean is also polluted with plastic, and the issue may be even more extensive than previously thought.

A study published this past week in the journal Nature estimates the volume of nanoplastics, which are even smaller than microplastics and invisible to the naked eye, to be at least 27 million metric tons in North Atlantic seas - more than the weight of all wild land mammals.

'' I've analyzed plastic in Swedish lakes, in urban and very remote air, but this was different,'' said Dusan Materic, head of microplastics and nanoplastics research group at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Germany and one of the lead authors of the analysis.

'' It's a missing part of the plastic story that we are answering here.''

Nanoplastics are microscopic fragments smaller than one micrometer - roughly the size of small bacteria.

''People were concerned about nanoplastics in ocean water, but they didn’t have the technology to see what they really looked like,'' said Tengfei Luo, an engineering professor at the University of Notre Dame who was not involved in the new study. 

Last year, Dr. Luo was an author of a separate study in the Journal Science Advances that was the first to successfully find nanoplastics in ocean water and show what they looked like.

The study found an average concentration of nanoplastics near coastlines 25 milligrams per cubic meter of water - about the weight of a single large bird feather.

Nanoplastics are tiny enough that they can easily infiltrate the bodies of living creatures, Dr. Luo said. For fish and other animals that live in the ocean that means constant exposure that builds up over time.

'' I don't think humans will be able to stop using plastics any time soon, but it's important to have better management of plastic waste,'' Dr. Luo said.

IN AUGUST, representatives of more than 100 countries will gather in Geneva for the final meeting of the United Nations' effort to tackle global plastic pollution.

The World Students Society thanks Sachi Kitajima Mulkey.