This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For the first time, UC Riverside scientists have measured how much microplastic pollution falls on the Sierra Nevada during snowstorms and were surprised to find significant amounts even in the most remote locations. Lead researcher Aleksandra Karapetrova, a UC Riverside environmental toxicologist, could not access any of the snowfall collection sites by car or even on foot.
She expected plastic to be harder to find or even nonexistent in at least a few of these locations, given their distance from human activity. "One site was accessed by chairlift. I had to ski to the rest of the remote sites.
That's how isolated they are," Karapetrova said. "But no matter how far out the site, I always found microplastics there." Details about the particles, the seven locations at which they were collected and the method used to verify their chemical properties are described in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Though the study did not determine how much plastic ultimately reaches drinking water, the findings have significance beyond the mountain, as the Sierra Nevada snowpack supplies about 30% of California's fresh water.
The study also describes how snow scavenges airborne plastic from the atmosphere and carries it to the ground, far from population centers and places where the plastic is produced or used. Microplastics enter the air when plastic products shed fibers or wear down into small fragments. Clothing can emit fibers directly into the atmosphere, including through dryer vents or just daily wear, while wind lifts particles from the ground and transports them elsewhere.
As snowflakes fall, they collect some of these tiny plastic particles suspended in the air. This process, called scavenging, helps explain why researchers measured substantially more plastic arriving with the falling snow than during dry weather. "We are at a point where microplastics are in our atmosphere, not just the ocean, not just rivers.
It comes down with the snowfall, making its way to places humans typically don't go," Karapetrova said. At remote sampling locations, during the height of the storm, the snow deposited between 270 and 3,200 plastic particles per square meter per day. At one site in the Mammoth Mountain ski area, the amount of pollution was roughly three times that found in remote sites.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
