Microplastics

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This weekly newsletter is part of a CBC News initiative entitled "Our Changing Planet" to show and explain the effects of climate change. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.This week:What microplastics are doing to seabirds could tell us about their effect on humansProtesting against private jetsHow to keep your pet safe from wildfire smokeWhat microplastics are doing to seabirds…

Microplastic samples collected from the oceans. Plastic fragments less than 5 mm in length are categorized as microplastics. The scale bar shows a length of 2000 µm or 2 mm. Credit: Kyushu University/Asahi Kasei CorporationA novel approach has been devised by researchers to determine the age of microplastics in the ocean. Their findings reveal that offshore microplastics can range from 1 to 3 years old, whereas nearshore microplastics can range from 0 to 5 years old.A new technique for determining the age of microplastics…

The world’s fast-fashion addiction is wrecking the planet. It’s also contributing to an enormous and growing pile of clothing that is sitting in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Tiffany & Co. Released NFTs (and They’re Ugly)SkyFi, a company that provides access to satellite imagery, recently shared a striking view of the Atacama Desert. The company explained in a blog post last week that members of itsDiscord channel had helped find the coordinates for the growing graveyard of trashed garments. “By purchasing a $44 Existing…

The plastics industry has long hyped recycling, even though it is well aware that it’s been a failure. Worldwide, only 9 percent of plastic waste actually gets recycled. In the United States, the rate is now 5 percent. Most used plastic is landfilled, incinerated, or winds up drifting around the environment. Now, an alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that contaminate the air and water. This pilot study focused on a single…

A critical component of the food web in the Arctic is at risk. According to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, Arctic ice algae has become infected with microplastics, threatening the creatures that feed on the algae. The new study shows that the algae found beneath the Arctic ice have much higher concentrations of microplastics than the surrounding seawater. Researchers say when the algae die, clumps of them carry the microplastics out to the deep sea, which could…

Picture a raft of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, and you’re probably imagining a pristine marriage of white and blue. But during summertime, below the surface, something much greener and goopier lurks. A type of algae, Melosira arctica, grows in large, dangling masses and curtains that cling to the underside of Arctic sea ice, mostly obscured from a bird’s eye view.Lower Drought Conditions In California | Extreme EarthThe algae, made up of long strings and clumps of single-celled organisms called diatoms, is an essential…

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.If An AI Reworks Copyrighted Images, Is It Art? | Future TechAs environmental challenges go, microfiber pollution has come from practically out of nowhere. It was only a decade or so ago that scientists first suspected our clothing, increasingly made of synthetic materials like polyester and nylon, might be major contributors to the global plastic problem.Today a growing body of science suggests the tiny strands that slough off…

By Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) April 21, 2023On a Polarstern expedition in the Arctic, researchers led by biologist Melanie Bergmann from the Alfred Wegener Institute are investigating how much microplastic is in aggregates of the ice alga Melosira arctica and the seawater directly next to ice floes. Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Mario HoppmannMelosira arctica has ten times higher concentration of plastic particles than surrounding seawater.The alga Melosira arctica,…

The smaller a particle is, the more organisms it can get into. Plastics can break down so small that they enter individual cells of either the algae or the zooplankton that feed on them. The researchers can’t yet say if all that microplastic is harming Melosira arctica. But additional lab research has found that plastic particles can be toxic for other forms of algae. “In experiments with very high doses of microplastics, small microplastics damaged and entered algal cells, leading to stress responses such as damage of…

There’s no debate that microplastics present an ever-increasing ecological and health threat, with scientists just starting to understand the extent of these tiny particles and their impact on organisms, from marine life to humans. A 2019 study revealed that we're even ingesting about 5 grams of microplastic, the weight of a credit card, each week.The challenge now, however, is to find methods to successfully remove microplastics (MPs) from water and the atmosphere – no easy task when these tiny pieces of plastic measure…