Record Levels of Plastics Contaminating the Arctic Sea Found

Today i came across another very important environmental problem i.e., Plastic waste as they find their way into the ocean, and from there to the farthest reaches of the planet – even as far as the Arctic. 

Microplastics are, perhaps unsurprisingly, tiny pieces of plastic. We use the term to refer to bits under five millimeters in length. They’re generally the result of the gradual breakdown process of larger pieces of plastic waste, but a large number of microplastics reaches the oceans directly from health and beauty products, in water from the washing of synthetic textiles, or from car tire abrasion.

The researchers found extremely high concentrations of plastic in their samples—up to 12,000 particles per liter of sea ice, or about 45,000 particles per gallon. Much of it was polyethylene.

All in all, the team found 17 different types of microplastics in the ice, including polyethylene and polypropylene (used in packaging), but also paints, nylon, polyester, and cellulose acetate (used to make cigarette filters). It’s not as if there’s been a sudden spike in the amount of plastic particles in the Arctic ocean — it’s been accumulating there for decades. Rather, the researchers used a more precise method of observing all the plastic fragments in the ice, even pieces just one-sixth the width of a human hair (11 micrometers).

In order to capture data about the kinds and quantity of plastic found in sea ice, the AWI researchers looked at ice core samples they took on polar expeditions in 2014 and 2015 following an ice movement called the Transpolar Drift from Siberia as far as the Fram Strait where warm Atlantic water enters the polar ocean. The Transpolar Drift was first identified by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen aboard the Fram, late in the 19th century.. They used a spectrometer, which analyzes reflected light to determine a sample’s composition using each substance’s “optic fingerprint.”

They found that the plastic evidence in each layer of the ice flow changed depending on where it had been. These big chunks of sea ice travel the Arctic, pushed by currents. They’re increasingly mobile as the Arctic sea opens up due to climate change, which means that they can carry microplastics from one side of the Arctic to the other, where they melt, scattering the foreign fragments. Some settle on the seafloor, and some are picked up by the current, heading back into the sea.

Ice-drift models showed that much of the plastic waste originated from heavily populated areas in the mid-latitudes; but burgeoning commercial shipping traffic in the melting Arctic also contributes to plastic pollution, the team concludes.

“This is an important finding because it means that they were always present in the water under the ice as it was growing, and drifting, within the Arctic Ocean,” said Jeremy Wilkinson, a sea ice physicist with the British Antarctic Survey, commenting on the study.

“Sea ice grows from the freezing of seawater directly onto the bottom of the ice (i.e. it grows vertically downwards), thus it was incorporating microplastic particles as it grew. It suggests that microplastics are now ubiquitous within the surface waters of the world’s oceans.  Nowhere is immune.”

Rod Downie, Head of Polar Programmes at WWF said: “Our addiction to plastic is leaving its mark across the globe – even in some of the most remote and inaccessible places, like the Arctic.

“We need to urgently stem the flow of plastics reaching our oceans before the damage is irreversible. The UK Government needs to show international leadership in this by banning avoidable single use plastic by 2025 otherwise the pollution of the Arctic will worsen.”