The images leave no one cold: giant vortices of floating plastic trash in the world s oceans with sometimes devastating consequences for their inhabitants – the sobering legacy of our modern lifes .
The images would definitely touch everyone: huge vortices of floating plastic trash in the global oceans with occasionally catastrophic consequences for their inhabitants an overwhelming legacy of contemporary lifestyle.
Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA)
Wherever scientists look, they can spot them: whether in remote mountain lakes, in Arctic sea ice, in the deep-ocean floor or in air samples, even in edible fish – thousands upon thousands of microscopic plastic particles in the micro to millimeter range. This microplastic is now even considered one of the defining features of the Anthropocene, the age of the Earth shaped by modern humans.
Microplastics are formed by weathering and physicochemical or biological degradation processes from macroscopic plastic products, such as the tons of plastic waste in the oceans. It is unlikely that these degradation processes will stop at the micrometer scale. And so there is growing concern about the potential harmful effects nanoplastics could have on various ecosystems. “Numerous media reports suggest, through their sometimes highly emotional coverage, that we are facing a huge problem here,” says Empa researcher Ber
Credit: Empa/ETH
Wherever scientists look, they can spot them: whether in remote mountain lakes, in Arctic sea ice, in the deep-ocean floor or in air samples, even in edible fish - thousands upon thousands of microscopic plastic particles in the micro to millimeter range. This microplastic is now even considered one of the defining features of the Anthropocene, the age of the Earth shaped by modern humans.
Microplastics are formed by weathering and physicochemical or biological degradation processes from macroscopic plastic products, such as the tons of plastic waste in the oceans. It is unlikely that these degradation processes will stop at the micrometer scale. And so there is growing concern about the potential harmful effects nanoplastics could have on various ecosystems. Numerous media reports suggest, through their sometimes highly emotional coverage, that we are facing a huge problem here, says Empa researcher Bernd Nowack, who has long studied the material flows of synthe