Three million plastic bottles are “abandoned” a year in a New Zealand city News today

In Auckland, New Zealand’s most populous city, 74 metric tons of microplastics “fall” on the city each year. To quantify this amount, the team of researchers at the University of Auckland who carried out the study points out that it is equivalent to three million plastic bottles falling. (can read: After halfway through COP15, an agreement to save biodiversity still has a long way to go)

In fact, the study, which was published in the journal Science Environmental Science & Technology, Located in the north of the island, this city indicates heavy pollution by microplastics. To determine that amount, researchers took samples at two different sites over nine weeks between September and November 2020.

As explained in the investigation, the amount of microplastics detected per square meter suspended in the air in one day was 4,885. That’s seven times higher than the concentration found in London two years ago and 15 times higher than the concentration found in Hamburg, Germany. (You may also be interested in: Chandran, the whale that swam over 5,000 kilometers with a broken back.)

The scientists, led by Professor Joel Rindelaub from the University of Auckland’s Waipappa Daumada Rao School of Chemistry, identified an increase in the concentration of microplastics as winds blowing from the Gulf increased their speed. This is key to understanding the role the ocean plays in microplastic transport.

“Airborne microplastic production from breaking waves may be an important part of global microplastic transport. This could help explain how some microplastics enter the atmosphere and are transported to places as far away as New Zealand,” Professor Rindelaub explained. (You may also read: They found 450,000 hectares of dead trees in America, what happened to them?)

Aside from the amount of microplastics they found in the city’s air, there’s another aspect that worries scientists: their size. For this study, the researchers were able to rely on instruments that allowed them to capture fragments as small as 0.01 millimeters. According to Professor Rindelab, this is “significant because small doses are more relevant from a toxicological point of view.”

Over the years, science has found evidence of microplastics in places as far away as Everest and in the stomachs and food of marine animals. In March of this year, researchers at the Free University of Amsterdam, for the first time, detected microplastics in the bloodstream. (You may also be interested in: A meeting of the International Maritime Organization opened in London with protests)

“Microplastics have been detected in human lungs and in the lung tissue of cancer patients, indicating that inhalation of atmospheric microplastics poses an exposure risk to humans,” the most recent study documents.