(Press-News.org) A study published today in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters reveals that centimetre-sized plastic fragments are increasing much faster than larger floating plastics in the North Pacific Garbage Patch [NPGP], threatening the local ecosystem and potentially the global carbon cycle.
The research, which draws from not-for-profit The Ocean Cleanup’s systematic surveys of the NPGP between 2015 and 2022, found an unexpected rise in mass concentration of plastic fragments that are likely new to the region, and not resulting from degradation of already present objects. The researchers hypothesise that these fragments from the break-down of decades old plastics discarded globally are now accumulating and exponentially increasing in this remote region of the Pacific Ocean.
The study examines 917 manta trawl samples, 162 mega trawl samples, 74 aerial surveys, and 40 cleanup system extractions from 50 individual expeditions between 2015 and 2022.
Key findings include:
Plastic fragments rose from 2.9kg per km2 to 14.2kg per km2 in 7 years
74% - 96% of this rise may be originating from foreign sources.
Small debris hotspots increased in concentration from 1 million per km2 in 2015 to over 10 million per km2 in 2022
Per km2 , the average number of every size class of floating plastics has significantly increased:
- Microplastics (0.5mm-5mm) risen from 960,000 to 1,500,000 items
- Mesoplastics (5mm-50mm) risen from 34,000 to 235,000 items
- Macroplastics (50mm-500mm) risen from 800 to 1,800 items per km2
The volume of plastic debris in the region surpasses that of living organisms, threatening the ecosystem not only by the ingestion or entanglement of plastic by marine life, but also potentially impacting the global carbon cycle because of zooplankton grazing affected by the presence of floating microplastics. Due to the increase in floating plastics, endemic marine animals are now in direct competition with new species that have colonized plastic debris and drifted to this remote part of the ocean.
Laurent Lebreton, lead author of the paper says: “The exponential rise in plastic fragments observed in our field studies is a direct consequence of decades of inadequate plastic waste management, leading to the relentless accumulation of plastics in the marine environment. This pollution is inflicting harm on marine life, with impacts we are only now beginning to fully grasp. Our findings should serve as an urgent call to action for lawmakers engaged in negotiating a global treaty to end plastic pollution. Now, more than ever, decisive and unified global intervention is essential.”
The researchers emphasise that, while countries are prioritizing upstream plastic pollution prevention, the interception and removal of already present plastics from the global marine environment is essential to urgently mitigate the generation of increasingly smaller plastic fragments in the ocean for decades to come.
ENDS
About IOP Publishing
IOP Publishing is a society-owned scientific publisher, delivering impact, recognition and value to the scientific community. Its purpose is to expand the world of physics, offering a portfolio of journals, ebooks, conference proceedings and science news resources globally.
IOPP is a member of Purpose-Led Publishing, a coalition of society publishers who pledge to put purpose above profit.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit society, IOP Publishing supports the Institute’s work to inspire people to develop their knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of physics. Visit ioppublishing.org to learn more.
About The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup is an international non-profit that develops and scales technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: intercepting in rivers to stop the flow and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. For the latter, The Ocean Cleanup develops and deploys large-scale systems to efficiently concentrate the plastic for periodic removal. This plastic is tracked and traced to certify claims of origin when recycling it into new products. To curb the inflow, The Ocean Cleanup has developed Interceptor™ solutions to halt and extract plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean. As of August 2024, the non-profit has collected over 16 million kilograms (35.3 million pounds) of trash from aquatic ecosystems around the world. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup now employs a broadly multi-disciplined team of approximately 140. The foundation is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and opened its first regional office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2023.
END
7-year study reveals plastic fragments from all over the globe are rising rapidly in the North Pacific Garbage Patch
2024-11-19
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New theory reveals the shape of a single photon
2024-11-19
A new theory, that explains how light and matter interact at the quantum level has enabled researchers to define for the first time the precise shape of a single photon.
Research at the University of Birmingham, published in Physical Review Letters, explores the nature of photons (individual particles of light) in unprecedented detail to show how they are emitted by atoms or molecules and shaped by their environment.
The nature of this interaction leads to infinite possibilities for light to exist and propagate, or travel, through its surrounding environment. This limitless ...
We could soon use AI to detect brain tumors
2024-11-19
A new paper in Biology Methods and Protocols, published by Oxford University Press, shows that scientists can train artificial intelligence models to distinguish brain tumors from healthy tissue. AI models can already find brain tumors in MRI images almost as well as a human radiologist.
Researchers have made sustained progress in artificial intelligence (AI) for use in medicine. AI is particularly promising in radiology, where waiting for technicians to process medical images can delay patient treatment. Convolutional neural networks are powerful tools that allow researchers to train AI models on large image datasets to recognize ...
TAMEST recognizes Lyda Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies with Kay Bailey Hutchison Distinguished Service Award
2024-11-19
TAMEST is pleased to announce Lyda Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies as the recipients of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Distinguished Service Award.
TAMEST is recognizing Lyda Hill and her team for empowering and enabling groundbreaking research in science and nature that profoundly impacts society. Lyda Hill, a successful businesswoman and world-renowned philanthropist, believes science can solve many of the world’s most challenging issues and has chosen to donate all of her estate to philanthropy and scientific research.
Aligned with this mission, Lyda Hill is committed to advancing science and public ...
Establishment of an immortalized red river hog blood-derived macrophage cell line
2024-11-19
Red river hogs (RRHs) (Potamochoerus porcus), a wild species of Suidae living in Africa, have grabbed much attention as an animal that harbors African swine fever virus (ASFV) as natural hosts. When ASFV infects domestic pigs and wild boars, it proliferates within macrophages, a type of immune cells, and infected pigs rapidly die suffering from symptoms such as fever and hemorrhage. On the other hand, ASFV infection in RRHs is asymptomatic and does not cause death, suggesting that RRH macrophages may have a protective mechanism against ASFV infection.
In vitro cell cultures of porcine macrophages are generally ...
Neural networks: You might not need to buy every ticket to win the lottery
2024-11-19
The more lottery tickets you buy, the higher your chances of winning, but spending more than you win is obviously not a wise strategy. Something similar happens in AI powered by deep learning: we know that the larger a neural network is (i.e., the more parameters it has), the better it can learn the task we set for it. However, the strategy of making it infinitely large during training is not only impossible but also extremely inefficient. Scientists have tried to imitate the way biological brains learn, which is highly resource-efficient, by providing machines with a gradual training process that starts with ...
Healthy New Town: Revitalizing neighborhoods in the wake of aging populations
2024-11-19
Planned suburban residential neighborhoods in metropolitan areas known as new towns were initially developed in England. The new town movement spread from Europe to East Asia, such as to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In Japan alone, 2,903 New Towns were built, but many experienced rapid population decline and aging in the 40 years after their development. Therefore, they changed into old new towns and had to transform their facilities.
Dr. Haruka Kato, a junior associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan ...
High exposure to everyday chemicals linked to asthma risk in children
2024-11-19
A new study from researchers at Kumamoto University sheds light on a potential link between exposure to certain everyday chemicals during pregnancy and the development of asthma in children. The study analyzed data from over 3,500 mother-child pairs as part of the Japan Environment and Children’s Study (JECS), a large-scale nationwide research project.
Key Findings:
High levels of butylparaben, a chemical commonly used in personal care products like lotions and shampoos, during early pregnancy were associated with a 1.54-fold increase in the odds of asthma development in children ...
How can brands address growing consumer scepticism?
2024-11-19
Transparency and effective communication are critical for brands to gain and keep consumer trust according to new research.
The University of Adelaide’s Dr Kate Sansome, from the Adelaide Business School has led a study which suggests that consumers want brands to be transparent about topics that impact them.
“As sociopolitical issues become topical in the news and social media, brands are expected to be transparent about them; for example, as consumers face cost-of-living pressures, they will expect brands to be transparent about this issue,” says Dr Sansome, who conducted the study with the Professor Jodie Conduit and Dr ...
New paradigm of quantum information technology revealed through light-matter interaction!
2024-11-19
□ A research team led by Professor Jaedong Lee from the Department of Chemical Physics of DGIST (President Kunwoo Lee) has introduced a novel quantum state and a pioneering mechanism for extracting and controlling quantum information using exciton and Floquet states.
□ Collaborating with Professor Noejung Park from UNIST’s Department of Physics (President Chongrae Park), the team has, for the first time, demonstrated the formation and synthesis process of exciton and Floquet states, which arise from light-matter interactions in two-dimensional semiconductors. This study captures quantum information in real-time as it unfolds through entanglement, offering ...
MSU researchers find trees acclimate to changing temperatures
2024-11-19
Images
Climate change is a persistent and growing challenge to plant life on our planet. Changes to the environment that plants are unaccustomed to affect how they grow, putting much at risk. Increasingly, plant scientists are trying to determine how these environmental changes will impact plant life and whether plants will be able to acclimate to a new status quo.
Researchers from the Walker lab at the Michigan State University-U.S. Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory, or PRL, are looking at how paper birch trees adapt to changing environments based on how they manage a vital plant process called photorespiration.
“If ...