from the we-didn't-think-this-through dept.
[Editor's Note: The term benthic refers to anything associated with or occurring on the bottom of a body of water. The animals and plants that live on or in the bottom are known as the benthos. In ocean waters, nearshore and estuary areas are most frequently mapped.]
From the Great Pacific garbage patch to inland rivers, plastics are among the most widespread contaminants on Earth. Microplastics -- particles of plastic smaller than five millimeters -- are especially pervasive. As they build up in Earth's waters, microplastics are also becoming a permanent part of the planet's sedimentary layers.
Microplastics analyzed from nearshore and offshore benthic sediment samples in lakes, benthic sediment samples in rivers, and water samples in lakes and rivers.
Microplastic pellets from the Great Lakes study. The pellet study involved sampling of 66 beaches on each Great Lake over a two-week period in October 2018, with a total of 12,974 pellets on 660 square meters of beach.
Now, using the Great Lakes as a laboratory, sedimentary petrologist Patricia Corcoran and her students at the University of Western Ontario are studying the behavior of microplastics as a geologic phenomenon.
What are the main sources of microplastics to Great Lakes sediment? What factors influence their distribution, and where do they concentrate? To explore these questions, and shed light on implications such as which animals may be at risk from microplastics, Corcoran's team has analyzed offshore and nearshore sediment samples from Lakes Huron, Ontario, Erie, and St. Clair, and their tributaries.
Abundances were as high as 4270 microplastics particles per kilogram of dry weight sediment in lake sediment, and up to 2444 microplastic particles per kilogram in river sediment.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday September 30 2019, @08:27AM (3 children)
And you say this as if the average Soylent did not already know? How condescending, janrinok! It is almost like you would have to explain the "bathos" in "Bathosphere", or the "lithos" in "neo-lithic". In the future, reserve your level of understanding to yourself, and keep the paternalistic editorializing to a minimum. Else exoteric knowledge will ingress your ninth chakra, and cause a severe back-ache.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 30 2019, @08:57AM
Oh, magister, it was you asking for a citation somewhere?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday September 30 2019, @03:46PM
I thought it was software to query Oracle databases.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 30 2019, @04:10PM
Benthic seems to be [offshoreenergytoday.com] the name of an offshore energy company. It is probably also a registered tirade mark.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @08:28AM (1 child)
It's already affecting sperm count,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/24/toxic-america-sperm-counts-plastics-research [theguardian.com]
but it's ok, we can just blame the feminists or the metrosexuals (like the Nazis do) instead of ourselves. And now it's becoming completely unavoidable to not have plastics floating and becoming part of your body.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:22PM
But apparently enough to publish FUD. This is not science but a propaganda piece.
Even stupider: "Companies stopped producing PCBs in the late 1970s ... but the chemical persists in the environment." What, exactly, can any song and dance done NOW half a century after, do to affect THAT? You need better water treatment, not a holy war against today's plastics.
People, your screaming prayers and doing sacrifices to the idol of ecology will accomplish even less than rituals of any other pagan cult. Stop hitting your head on floorboards in penance and use the remaining brains to THINK a bit.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:27PM (2 children)
Same as dihydrogen monoxide refers to water. And is being used for the same reason: to mislead.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @02:01PM (1 child)
Lets start referring to sand as "microrocks"
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:44AM
So clay would be nanorocks contaminated with dihydrogen monoxide?
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 30 2019, @06:55PM
When are they going to start wailing about all the rubber dust in the environment, and all the metal dust in the environment from all the humans running around driving cars, riding bikes, and wearing shoes? How long will it be before they get hysterical about all the carbon dioxide that humans exhale every day? I mean, it has to be billions of tons of the stuff, right? And think of the urine they micturate. And the feces! Once that stuff enters the environment, it stays forever. There's an even worse, silent killer that nobody's talking about: the shade that a human casts while walking around. They deprive innocent, holy natural grass and plants with the sunlight they need to live--just to SIMPLY LIVE!
Yes, plastics are unsightly when they clutter up the environment. I don't want plastic grocery bags festooning the Joshua trees in the desert. I don't want to see plastic bottles floating in our rivers or lakes. But the stuff is inert and will wear down to dust through mechanical action eventually. The same thing will happen as has happened to all the glass and metal objects discarded by our parents and grandparents: it will return to the soil. Some people even now collect the "sea glass" for art projects, because it's cool. Future generations may marvel at the Pacific Garbage patch, at how what started out as refuse became colonized by life and turned into a thriving floating habitat.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:07AM (1 child)
Isn't this a good thing? This means that plastic is being recaptured and taken out of normal ecological circulation. It will eventually accumulate and form novel sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, but otherwise most likely cease causing harm to us and other organisms.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Chocolate on Tuesday October 01 2019, @07:42AM
Sshhhh
The spin here is that this is a bad thing
Get with the programme
Bit-choco-coin anyone?