Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions
In recent years, marine, freshwater and terrestrial pollution with microplastics has been discussed extensively, whereas atmospheric microplastic transport has been largely overlooked. Here, we present global simulations of atmospheric transport of microplastic particles produced by road traffic (TW...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7360784 2023-05-15T15:02:50+02:00 Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions Evangeliou, N. Grythe, H. Klimont, Z. Heyes, C. Eckhardt, S. Lopez-Aparicio, S. Stohl, A. 2020-07-14 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7360784/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32665541 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17201-9 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7360784/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32665541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17201-9 © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Nat Commun Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17201-9 2020-07-26T00:29:27Z In recent years, marine, freshwater and terrestrial pollution with microplastics has been discussed extensively, whereas atmospheric microplastic transport has been largely overlooked. Here, we present global simulations of atmospheric transport of microplastic particles produced by road traffic (TWPs – tire wear particles and BWPs – brake wear particles), a major source that can be quantified relatively well. We find a high transport efficiencies of these particles to remote regions. About 34% of the emitted coarse TWPs and 30% of the emitted coarse BWPs (100 kt yr(−1) and 40 kt yr(−1) respectively) were deposited in the World Ocean. These amounts are of similar magnitude as the total estimated direct and riverine transport of TWPs and fibres to the ocean (64 kt yr(−1)). We suggest that the Arctic may be a particularly sensitive receptor region, where the light-absorbing properties of TWPs and BWPs may also cause accelerated warming and melting of the cryosphere. Text Arctic PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Nature Communications 11 1 |
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Article Evangeliou, N. Grythe, H. Klimont, Z. Heyes, C. Eckhardt, S. Lopez-Aparicio, S. Stohl, A. Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
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In recent years, marine, freshwater and terrestrial pollution with microplastics has been discussed extensively, whereas atmospheric microplastic transport has been largely overlooked. Here, we present global simulations of atmospheric transport of microplastic particles produced by road traffic (TWPs – tire wear particles and BWPs – brake wear particles), a major source that can be quantified relatively well. We find a high transport efficiencies of these particles to remote regions. About 34% of the emitted coarse TWPs and 30% of the emitted coarse BWPs (100 kt yr(−1) and 40 kt yr(−1) respectively) were deposited in the World Ocean. These amounts are of similar magnitude as the total estimated direct and riverine transport of TWPs and fibres to the ocean (64 kt yr(−1)). We suggest that the Arctic may be a particularly sensitive receptor region, where the light-absorbing properties of TWPs and BWPs may also cause accelerated warming and melting of the cryosphere. |
format |
Text |
author |
Evangeliou, N. Grythe, H. Klimont, Z. Heyes, C. Eckhardt, S. Lopez-Aparicio, S. Stohl, A. |
author_facet |
Evangeliou, N. Grythe, H. Klimont, Z. Heyes, C. Eckhardt, S. Lopez-Aparicio, S. Stohl, A. |
author_sort |
Evangeliou, N. |
title |
Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
title_short |
Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
title_full |
Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
title_fullStr |
Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
title_full_unstemmed |
Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
title_sort |
atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7360784/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32665541 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17201-9 |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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Nat Commun |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7360784/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32665541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17201-9 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17201-9 |
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Nature Communications |
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11 |
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1 |
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