The ice at the North Pole is full of plastic

The ice at the North Pole is full of plastic

World April 25, 2018 19:44

- German scientists have revealed shocking research results. The snow-white ice at the North Pole, which seems so pristine, is actually filled with tiny pieces of plastic.

Scientists from the Wegener Institute collected Arctic ice at five different locations in the spring of 2014 and the summer of 2015.

The ice cores were analyzed layer by layer, after which the researchers discovered as many as 12,000 microscopically small pieces of plastic per liter of ice. That is more than double than previously observed in the Arctic ice.

The particles are smaller than five millimeters, which means that they can easily be eaten by living organisms in the water. As many as seventeen different types of plastic particles were found. These are remnants of packaging, paint, nylon and cellulose acetate, which is used to make cigarette filters.

Most would come from the plastic soup, the floating garbage dump in the north of the Pacific Ocean. But the increased shipping and fishing also cause pollution on the ground, according to the researchers.

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. The scientists indicate that they are concerned about this. The so-called microplastics are now stuck in the ice, but as soon as the ice melts they end up back in the water, which can be very harmful to animals and / or humans.

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