Microplastics ’From the Air’ Found in Arctic Snow and Ice - EcoWatch
▻https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-pollution-arctic-snow-ice-2639834233.html
The ice-core samples were taken by the Northwest Passage Project, a National-Science-Foundation-funded trip aboard the icebreaker Oden from July 18 to Aug. 4. The primary purpose of the expedition was to understand the impact of the climate crisis on the region, but researchers tested the ice for plastic pollution too.
Plastic has been found in Arctic sea ice before, but this summer’s expedition marks the first time that researchers have observed it in ice in the Northwest Passage, the crossing through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, The University of Rhode Island said.[...]
Another study published in Science Advances Wednesday set out to assess how ice might end up in the Arctic by looking at snow. In order to test if plastic was being transported through the atmosphere and then deposited with snowfall, researchers, mostly from the German Alfred Wegener Institute, looked at snow from the Arctic’s Fram Strait, the Swiss Alps and Germany. While they found more plastic in the European locations, they were surprised by how much they found in the Arctic: up to 14,400 particles of plastic per liter, according to Reuters.