Atmospheric microplastics: A review on current status and perspectives

TL;DR: This review provides a state-of-the-art overview of current research on NPs with focus on currently less-investigated fields, such as the environmental fate in agroecosystems, migration in porous media, weathering, and toxic effects on plants.

TL;DR: A comparison of plastic stocks and fluxes to those of carbon reveals that the quantities of plastics present in some ecosystems rival the quantity of natural organic carbon and suggests that geochemists should now consider plastics in their analyses.

TL;DR: The results show that microplastics are ubiquitous in the investigated sediment of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, with an abundance of 2-5 orders of magnitude across different regions, and it is concluded that the consistency of morphological characteristics and components of microplastic between the beach or marine sediments and freshwater sediments may be an indicator of these interlinkages and source-pathways.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors place nanoplastics in the context of global plastic pollution by assessing its sources and risks, and by assessing commonalities nanoparticles may share with other nanosized objects in environmental systems, such as engineered nanomaterials and natural colloids.

Abstract: Dumping lots of plastics into our oceans Considerable progress has been made in determining the amount and location of plastic debris in our seas, but how much plastic actually enters them in the first place is more uncertain. Jambeck et al. combine available data on solid waste with a model that uses population density and economic status to estimate the amount of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean. Unless waste management practices are improved, the flux of plastics to the oceans could increase by an order of magnitude within the next decade. Science, this issue p. 768 Millions of tons of plastic waste end up in our oceans every year. Plastic debris in the marine environment is widely documented, but the quantity of plastic entering the ocean from waste generated on land is unknown. By linking worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, we estimated the mass of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean. We calculate that 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with 4.8 to 12.7 million MT entering the ocean. Population size and the quality of waste management systems largely determine which countries contribute the greatest mass of uncaptured waste available to become plastic marine debris. Without waste management infrastructure improvements, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste available to enter the ocean from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.

TL;DR: It is shown that microscopic plastic fragments and fibers are also widespread in the marine environment and may persist for centuries.

TL;DR: This review of 68 studies compares the methodologies used for the identification and quantification of microplastics from the marine environment and suggests standardized sampling procedures which allow the spatiotemporal comparison ofmicroplastic abundance across marine environments.

TL;DR: It is shown that microplastic contaminates the shorelines at 18 sites worldwide representing six continents from the poles to the equator, with more material in densely populated areas, but no clear relationship between the abundance of miocroplastics and the mean size-distribution of natural particulates.