Contents
Scientists from Europe and Canada have recorded a high concentration of plastic in the Arctic. We explain why this happened and why it is dangerous
What’s going on
- A group of scientists from Europe and Canada studied the environmental pollution of the Arctic. The study showed that the region is suffering from a large amount of plastic that has found its way into the air, ocean, ice, snow, seabed and coasts.
- Most plastic waste breaks down into microplastics less than 5 mm in size, invisible to the naked eye. This is dangerous because microplastic particles are absorbed by marine life, which are then eaten by humans.
- In deep-sea sediments, the concentration of microplastics was 13 thousand particles per 1 kg of sediment.
- Plastic is dangerous for marine animals also because it enters the respiratory tract, because of which the animals suffocate and die. In addition, animals can accidentally eat plastic trash, become entangled in nets and become trapped.
- Dark-colored microplastic particles seep into ice and snow. Because of this, the snow darkens, reflects sunlight worse and melts faster. Global warming is accelerating and sea levels are rising. This is a serious problem, because the Arctic is warming twice as fast as other parts of the Earth.
- There are several main sources of plastic pollution in the Arctic: equipment from fishing boats, plastic waste from local communities, sewage, and rivers that carry plastic into the ocean from remote parts of the mainland. The Arctic Ocean makes up only 1% of the total volume of the world’s oceans, but it accounts for 1/10 of the world’s river runoff.
What does it mean
More than 380 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year. Because of this, more than 100 thousand marine animals die, including in the Arctic.
The problem of pollution in the Arctic has been studied for a long time. The Arctic Ocean receives industrial and agricultural waste from Europe and Asia, which decomposes relatively slowly due to low temperatures. In 2019, a group of scientists from the Center for Polar and Marine Research. Helmholtz conducted research on the territory of the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and found out that a liter of snow there on average contains about 14,4 thousand microplastic particles. In the same year, a group of American scientists also found microplastics, but already in the Arctic ice.
Microplastics, along with food and water, enter the body of both animals and humans. How exactly it affects different living organisms is not yet fully understood, but laboratory studies show that microplastics do damage human cells.