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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...

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Autores principales: 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
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
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.
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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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