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A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required
As global awareness, science, and policy interventions for plastic escalate, institutions around the world are seeking preventative strategies. Central to this is the need for precise global time series of plastic pollution with which we can assess whether implemented policies are effective, but at...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9994742/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36888681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281596 |
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author | Eriksen, Marcus Cowger, Win Erdle, Lisa M. Coffin, Scott Villarrubia-Gómez, Patricia Moore, Charles J. Carpenter, Edward J. Day, Robert H. Thiel, Martin Wilcox, Chris |
author_facet | Eriksen, Marcus Cowger, Win Erdle, Lisa M. Coffin, Scott Villarrubia-Gómez, Patricia Moore, Charles J. Carpenter, Edward J. Day, Robert H. Thiel, Martin Wilcox, Chris |
author_sort | Eriksen, Marcus |
collection | PubMed |
description | As global awareness, science, and policy interventions for plastic escalate, institutions around the world are seeking preventative strategies. Central to this is the need for precise global time series of plastic pollution with which we can assess whether implemented policies are effective, but at present we lack these data. To address this need, we used previously published and new data on floating ocean plastics (n = 11,777 stations) to create a global time-series that estimates the average counts and mass of small plastics in the ocean surface layer from 1979 to 2019. Today’s global abundance is estimated at approximately 82–358 trillion plastic particles weighing 1.1–4.9 million tonnes. We observed no clear detectable trend until 1990, a fluctuating but stagnant trend from then until 2005, and a rapid increase until the present. This observed acceleration of plastic densities in the world’s oceans, also reported for beaches around the globe, demands urgent international policy interventions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9994742 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99947422023-03-09 A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required Eriksen, Marcus Cowger, Win Erdle, Lisa M. Coffin, Scott Villarrubia-Gómez, Patricia Moore, Charles J. Carpenter, Edward J. Day, Robert H. Thiel, Martin Wilcox, Chris PLoS One Research Article As global awareness, science, and policy interventions for plastic escalate, institutions around the world are seeking preventative strategies. Central to this is the need for precise global time series of plastic pollution with which we can assess whether implemented policies are effective, but at present we lack these data. To address this need, we used previously published and new data on floating ocean plastics (n = 11,777 stations) to create a global time-series that estimates the average counts and mass of small plastics in the ocean surface layer from 1979 to 2019. Today’s global abundance is estimated at approximately 82–358 trillion plastic particles weighing 1.1–4.9 million tonnes. We observed no clear detectable trend until 1990, a fluctuating but stagnant trend from then until 2005, and a rapid increase until the present. This observed acceleration of plastic densities in the world’s oceans, also reported for beaches around the globe, demands urgent international policy interventions. Public Library of Science 2023-03-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9994742/ /pubmed/36888681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281596 Text en © 2023 Eriksen et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Eriksen, Marcus Cowger, Win Erdle, Lisa M. Coffin, Scott Villarrubia-Gómez, Patricia Moore, Charles J. Carpenter, Edward J. Day, Robert H. Thiel, Martin Wilcox, Chris A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required |
title | A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required |
title_full | A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required |
title_fullStr | A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required |
title_full_unstemmed | A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required |
title_short | A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required |
title_sort | growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—urgent solutions required |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9994742/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36888681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281596 |
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