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Trillions of Plastic Pieces May Be Trapped In Arctic Ice
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Humans produced nearly 300 million tons of plastic in 2012, but where does it end up? A new study has found plastic debris in a surprising location: trapped in Arctic sea ice. As the ice melts, it could release a flood of floating plastic onto the world. From the article: 'Scientists already knew that microplastics—polymer beads, fibers, or fragments less than 5 millimeters long—can wind up in the ocean, near coastlines, or in swirling eddies such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But Rachel Obbard, a materials scientist at Dartmouth College, was shocked to find that currents had carried the stuff to the Arctic.'"
nearly 300 million tons of plastic in 2012 [...] reaching 288 million tonnes in 2012
http://bash.org/?2999
Estimates of how much of that production has been trapped in Arctic ice provided in the article:
- "[some of] much of [the total amount of plastic produced]"
- "more than 1 trillion pieces of plastic"
- "abundances of hundreds of ['fragments less than 5 millimeters long' selected using a microscope] per cubic meter"
Would have really hurt to estimate the weight of those fragments? One plastic bag could easily end up as a million pieces of plastic. About one plastic bag or 10 grams of plastic per 10.000 cubic meters sounds a lot less dramatic, I guess.