Final Blog: Micro-plastics are raining down from the sky

“It was incredible how much micro-plastic was being deposited,” said Deonie Allen, a researcher at EcoLab in the School of Agricultural and Life Sciences in Toulouse, France (National Geographic). Allen and his crew of scientists collected micro-plastics over a span of five months. They worked at a meteorological station which was about 4500 feet above sea level. To collect the plastic they used atmospheric deposition catchers (basically really tall funnels). The scientists collected everything they could get; plastic fragments, fibers, and films that were all less than 300 microns in size. To put it into perspective, one piece of human hair is between 50 and 70 microns in diameter. So basically, there is plastic in our oceans, on our land, and in our air.... we are screwed and there is not much we can do about it because there is so much everywhere and we are still making more. To be honest, I wasn't surprised that we are breathing in plastic. I mean, in one study, researchers estimated that 15-51 trillion micro-plastics floating around in our oceans. By the way, a trillion seconds is about 32,000 years. I mean micro-plastic is already in the fish we eat, why not breathe it in too right? My first guess was that the water particles that had evaporated had brought up micro-plastic particles with them. I'm wondering why it took this long for us to wonder about plastic in the air. 

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