Occurrence and backtracking of microplastic mass loads including tire wear particles in northern Atlantic air

Few studies report the occurrence of microplastics (MP), including tire wear particles (TWP) in the marine atmosphere, and little data is available regarding their size or sources. Here we present active air sampling devices (low- and high-volume samplers) for the evaluation of composition and MP ma...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2023-06, Vol.14 (1), p.3707-3707, Article 3707
Main Authors: Goßmann, Isabel, Herzke, Dorte, Held, Andreas, Schulz, Janina, Nikiforov, Vladimir, Georgi, Christoph, Evangeliou, Nikolaos, Eckhardt, Sabine, Gerdts, Gunnar, Wurl, Oliver, Scholz-Böttcher, Barbara M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
140/58
704/172/169/824
704/172/4081
Air sampling
Arctic zone
Atmosphere
Atmospheric models
Clusters
Emissions
Environmental Monitoring
Gas chromatography
Humanities and Social Sciences
Mass spectrometry
Mass spectroscopy
Microplastics
multidisciplinary
Particulate matter
Plastic pollution
Plastics - chemistry
Polyethylene terephthalate
Polypropylene
Polypropylenes
Polystyrene
Polystyrene resins
Polyurethane
Polyurethane resins
Pyrolysis
Samplers
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Water Pollutants, Chemical - analysis
Wear particles
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Few studies report the occurrence of microplastics (MP), including tire wear particles (TWP) in the marine atmosphere, and little data is available regarding their size or sources. Here we present active air sampling devices (low- and high-volume samplers) for the evaluation of composition and MP mass loads in the marine atmosphere. Air was sampled during a research cruise along the Norwegian coast up to Bear Island. Samples were analyzed with pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, generating a mass-based data set for MP in the marine atmosphere. Here we show the ubiquity of MP, even in remote Arctic areas with concentrations up to 37.5 ng m −3 . Cluster of polyethylene terephthalate (max. 1.5 ng m −3 ) were universally present. TWP (max. 35 ng m −3 ) and cluster of polystyrene, polypropylene, and polyurethane (max. 1.1 ng m −3 ) were also detected. Atmospheric transport and dispersion models, suggested the introduction of MP into the marine atmosphere equally from sea- and land-based emissions, transforming the ocean from a sink into a source for MP. Microplastics the marine atmosphere are a highly relevant subject, yet barely investigated. This study showed their ubiquity in the nanogram range even in remote Artic regions and depict the ocean acts as both a sink and source for microplastics
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-023-39340-5