Ocean-Clogging Microplastics Also Pollute the Air, Study Finds

Vacuum cleaners can indirectly release plastic particles into the air: 1. While changing vacuum cleaner bags. 2. When compacted inside a garbage truck.

"... microplastic particles raining down on a secluded spot in the Pyrenees ..." The researchers should try sampling the air around garbage trucks that use compacters. Based on personal observation, garbage trucks leak some liquids and allow some plastic bags to escape. What I can't see are airborne particles.

We’re doomed. That simple. We’re doomed. The ceaseless onslaught on our bodies and minds arrives from all directions. The same industries that manufacture the fossil fuels quickly and steadily poisoning Earth’s environment make the chemical feedstocks used in plastics, including micro-plastics. These are the wealthiest, most politically powerful and savvy industries on Earth. The metaphorical playing field isn’t merely titled to their advantage, they own it, and the stadium, and all roads leading to it. They aren’t about to stop making either poisonous fuels nor poisonous plastics to save Earth’s biosphere — or us, for that matter. They couldn’t care less. And they can always find Judases to help them. They aren’t about to allow city, county, state, national or international governments to interfere in their extremely profitable business activities as their dismissive, near hysterical reaction to the Green New Deal indicates only too clearly. They effectively control the debate through bought-off media apparatchiks, political parties, corrupt proxies and ambitious shills. As for the likelihood that an aroused public will take matters into its own hands in our Second Millennium bread and circus America (Big Macs, Bud Lite and the Super Bowl) — take back political power that it was forced to delegate to our storied duopoly, our two corrupt political parties — to save its children and grandchildren from a grisly end, that’s about as likely as you changing my water into wine.

What to do about other people's plastic that gets in the air? It's spring and we will all be opening the windows and airing out our homes and apartments. Until we eliminate the problem a new solutions is to filter the air using the new smart window fans and keep our indoor air clean!

This is an ISSUE we all can agree needs to be addressed, IMHO. I will explore what orgs are doing something about this. Does anyone recommend solutions or organizations to contact? Please share!

Plastics are miraculous, magical, wonderful materials. The sophistication of polymer chemistry allows for products that can be manufactured no other way. Plastic alloys can be engineered to yield items of amazing mechanical strength, resilience, and long life- polypropylene hinges, when properly molded, can be bent up to a million times without failure... Too bad we didn’t appreciate the potential for recycling and reuse of these miraculous, magical, marvelous materials half a century ago. We knew how to do it back then, but petrolium was plentiful, profitable, politically powerful. What had been a blessing to humanity back then has become a curse today. “Nothing is made by Man, but it makes, in the end, good ruins.”

"Microplastics can come from a variety of sources, ..." One of the offenders is carpeting. My ceiling fan and bathroom exhaust fan get coated with a mat of "dust" that is the color of my carpet. When the sun shines in at a low angle, it is easy to see fibers fluttering in the air.

And our President worries about his food being poisoned, so prefers McDonal’s and such? But he is breathing and drinking these particles along with the rest of us.

I read the article in wired... sounded very scary because of the ubiquity, half-life, and unknown effects of plastics as they degrade, especially nanoplastics. Nanoplastics potentially can invade/pass in to most if not all biological spaces. Think traversing blood/brain barrier, mitochondria, etc.

This has to STOP. And as ordinary citizens, we CAN stop it. I no longer buy any plastic bags, only drink filtered tap water from refillable bottles, and use reusable coton bags for everything that is rice, cereals, beans, nuts, etc. (more and more organic shops allow you to fill your own coton bags (and even sell them) rather than buying rice pre-packed in closed plastic bags). Bulk selling will be our (and our planet's) future. And it's perfectly feasible, it's merely a matter of habits. And it even makes you feel good ... ;-)

Oil - it's the gift that keeps on giving. More ghastly environmental news.

Never has the song ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ felt so apt. It wears me out.

Profit and warfare have driven contamination of our planet with toxic chemicals, radiation, plastics, etc. without any regard for future generations. This seems to be the legacy of the industrial and technological revolutions which have occurred over the past century or so, compounded by our inability to select competent leaders and the almost complete absence of accountability for decisions made by those in powerful positions. Inevitably there will be health effects from the irresponsible contamination of our ecosystem, which continues unabated at present.

Welcome to the Anthropocene Era. And we get front page articles telling us the country is too empty and needs more people.

This should have been top of the scroll news. If we can’t breath, we can’t live. And only a small number of us seem able to understand that connection. Is it rocket science? I don’t get it.

Living downwind or near any Landfill is a big mistake.

So the takeaway is, there's seemingly no end to how horrifying plastics are to all life on this planet?

Headline in newspaper of future aliens after they figure out we went extinct died due to microplastics: "Clever species experienced uncontrollable massive die off after their guts were overwhelmed by microplastics". Students are forced to wear polyester for school gym class and people are forced to have polyester carpets at work. It's an enormous problem. I wish the carpets would go and the schools would require all-cotton outfits.

With all the concern about climate change, and the rather tiresome debate about it, the fact that humankind is turning the world into a toilet is overlooked.

Too bad we are entering a new dark age, where science is suspect and the superrich control our governments, obstructing reason and human progress.

The laundering of Polyester clothing is an important source of microplastic pollution. Patagonia did a study a couple of years ago that found up to 85k pieces of microplastic get released with every garment washing. Microplastics are probably a very small part of the ocean plastic gyres because they sink to the bottom

Is there research out there on effects of breathing microparticle plastics? Could it be damaging to the lungs, similar to second-hand smoke?

I thank the New York Times for continuing to report on the harmful effects of plastics. Perhaps more readers will make the connection to their own lives and do as I have done, after seeing two upsetting documentaries about plastics in our oceans ("A Plastic Ocean" and "Blue"). I have almost entirely stopped buying anything packaged in plastic, for more than a year. Yes, I still miss certain products I used to buy, but greater still is the feeling of satisfaction I get from knowing that I'm doing something--anything--in the battle against planet-destroying plastics. I also regularly write short e-mails to companies whose plastic-packaged products I used to buy. They need to hear from consumers. While the petroleum and plastics industries are seemingly ramping up production in response to growing concern about plastics, what consumers choose does have an effect. We cannot sit idly by while our planet is subsumed by the plastic monster of our own making.

Petroleum derived plastics are a modern scourge. ASAP it needs to be replaced with dissolvable materials, of which there are many alternatives, such as plant-based "plastics", bagasse-based materials, seaweed water bubbles, corn starch and sorghum based materials, etc. Unfortunately we need to act quickly, which in the modern world seems unlikely.