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<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Tiny
particles found in sea-floor sediment point to partial solution to 'missing
plastic' problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
letter-spacing:-.4pt'>Plastic waste taints the ocean floors<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span class=vcard><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:
"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/plastic-waste-taints-the-ocean-floors-1.16581#auth-1"><span
style='color:windowtext;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Sid Perkins</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Nature
</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>doi:10.1038/nature.2014.16581<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>17
December 2014<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>http://www.nature.com/news/plastic-waste-taints-the-ocean-floors-1.16581<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Billions of
tiny plastic fragments are littering each square kilometre of the deep sea, an
analysis of sea-floor sediments suggests</span><sup><span style='font-size:
9.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/plastic-waste-taints-the-ocean-floors-1.16581#b1"
title="Goodall, L. C. et al. R. Soc. Open Sci. 1, 140317 (2014)."
id=ref-link-2><span style='color:#5C7996'>1</span></a></span></sup><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>. Although the study sampled a small
number of sites, the locations ranged from the subpolar Atlantic to the Indian
Ocean, enabling researchers to design future studies that could determine where
much of the plastic manufactured by humans ends up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Plastic waste
has long been recognized as a problem for the oceans: it pollutes beaches;
accumulates in floating, nation-sized 'garbage patches'; and is consumed by
seabirds, fish and other creatures. In a study published last week</span><sup><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/plastic-waste-taints-the-ocean-floors-1.16581#b2"
title="Eriksen, M. et al. PLoS ONE 9, e111913 (2014)." id=ref-link-3><span
style='color:#5C7996'>2</span></a></span></sup><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>,
scientists estimated that more than 250,000 tonnes of plastic litter the ocean’s
surface.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Yet that is
only a minuscule fraction of the plastic produced each year, says Richard
Thompson, a marine biologist at Plymouth University, UK. Slightly less than
half of the material ends up recycled or in landfills, according to some studies,
and much of the rest goes 'missing', he notes (see '<a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/fate-of-ocean-plastic-remains-a-mystery-1.16508"><span
style='color:#5C7996'>Fate of ocean plastic remains a mystery</span></a>').<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>In the latest
study, published in<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><i>Royal
Society Open Science</i></span><sup><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:
"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/plastic-waste-taints-the-ocean-floors-1.16581#b1"
title="Goodall, L. C. et al. R. Soc. Open Sci. 1, 140317 (2014)."
id=ref-link-4><span style='color:#5C7996'>1</span></a></span></sup><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>, Thompson and his colleagues
scrutinized samples of sediment and coral retrieved from 16 sites in the
Mediterranean Sea, the North Atlantic Ocean and southwestern Indian Ocean. Each
of the dozen sediment samples contained colourful fibre fragments around 2–3
millimetres in length and 0.1 mm in diameter (about the thickness of a human
hair), says Thompson. The team tallied, on average, more than 13 bits of fibre
per 50 millilitres of sediment (or about 4 bits per tablespoon).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#111111'>Current affairs<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>All four coral samples
also carried synthetic fibres, but it is not clear how the microplastics would
have become attached to the creatures, says Lucy Woodall, a marine biologist at
the Natural History Museum in London and first author on the paper. She notes,
however, that it seems that the current-wafted fragments became stuck to the
outside of the mucus-covered animals rather than being consumed by them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Extrapolating
from the Indian Ocean samples, each square kilometre of sea floor in that
region could hold 4 billion bits of fibre, the researchers estimate. Because
every sample the team analysed included such fragments, the contaminants are
likely ubiquitous in the deep sea worldwide, the researchers contend.
“The deep sea floor could be the ultimate resting ground for the products
of our disposable society,” says Thompson.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Almost 57% of
the fibre fragments were made of rayon (a synthetic material made mostly of
wood pulp), and more than half of the rest were polyester. Potential sources
for such synthetic materials are numerous, and include ropes, fishing lines,
clothing and even cigarette filters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The
team’s results are “a big step forward” in understanding
where some of the world's plastic ends up, says Kara Lavender Law, a physical
oceanographer with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
“This may be a case of ‘the more we look, the more we’ll
find’,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Indeed, most of
the missing plastic is probably untallied because of poor sampling, says Mark
Browne, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. What
Thompson’s team found is “hugely important”, he says.
“I really worry about what the concentrations near large coastal cities
will be.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Aside from leaching
potentially harmful substances into the environment, the synthetics can also
soak up and then release a plethora of chemicals that they encounter between
disposal and their final resting place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:19.8pt;
margin-left:0in'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>“People
don’t tend to think of the deep sea floor as a biologically rich habitat,
but it is,” says Law.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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