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Record Levels of Microplastics Found in Arctic Sea Ice

posted by Fnord666 on Monday April 30 2018, @11:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the plastic-sink dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

BBC News reports that "ice cores were gathered from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean in the spring of 2014 and summer of 2015" and the researchers "found concentrations of over 12,000 particles per litre of sea ice - which is two to three times higher than" than they had seen previously.

Arctic sea ice is an important temporal sink and means of transport for microplastic
orcid.org/0000-0003-1531-1664

Previously: Microplastics in Arctic Ice

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 30 2018, @05:51PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @05:51PM (#673833) Journal

    OK, but Brownian motion applies to small enough pieces of plastic, and in this context that's about the same. Mind you, I didn't follow the argument, but this specific objection to it doesn't work. Also, since these were ice cores, it's not clear that the source was ships of any sort. If it's largely by water washing over the top of floating ice in sub-freezing weather, then one might expect air pollution to be the source. But mainly since plastic floats, ice doesn't form in rapid turbulence, etc. I think the explanation fails on other points.

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  • (Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:34AM (2 children)

    by ants_in_pants (6665) on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:34AM (#678688)

    why would brownian motion matter when talking about measuring plastic concentrations?

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:41PM (1 child)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:41PM (#678865) Journal

      A lot of the pieces are quite small. Small enough that Brownian motion becomes important.

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      • (Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:47AM

        by ants_in_pants (6665) on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:47AM (#680602)

        important to...?

        So they move brownianly on small scales. That's nice but completely irrelevant.

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