In the Arctic ice contains a huge number of microparticles of plastic - up to several million per cubic meter. This conclusion was reached by German researchers, their article is published in Nature Communications, a summary of the results tells BBC News.
Plastic is a significant danger to the Earth's ecology. In the world, several hundred million tons of plastic are produced annually, while only a small part of it is processed. In this case, the plastic is extremely slow to decompose, therefore, basically, it simply accumulates - a significant part of it eventually settles in the oceans.
In the new study, scientists, using Fourier spectroscopy in the infrared region, analyzed the composition of ice cores that were taken from different points of the Arctic Ocean from 2005 to 2015.
The results showed that the concentration of microparticles of plastic (mostly they were less than 0.05 millimeters in size) is - depending on the region of the ocean - from a million to 12 million pieces per cubic meter. Compared with previous similar studies, the results of which were published in 2014, the amount of plastic in the Arctic increased threefold. Most microparticles were the remains of products made of polyurethane, polyethylene, ethylene vinyl acetate and cellulose acetate, and in total 17 types of plastic were found.
The results of the study also helped scientists understand the approximate routes for the movement of plastic debris along the Arctic Ocean: a significant part of it got there from a large trash in the Pacific Ocean; many pieces also had a local origin associated with fishing and shipping activities directly in the Arctic.
Scientists emphasize that ice is only a temporary storage for plastic - due to active thawing, including caused by global warming, more particles fall back into the water. Since they are very small, with a high probability they can get into the stomachs of marine animals together with water, which can lead to unpredictable negative consequences.
"No one can say for sure how much these tiny plastic particles are harmful to marine life and, ultimately, to humans," the study authors noted..