this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I've been reading the wikipedia article, not through all of it yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

Some highlights:
Bottled water has much higher microplastics content than tap water.

Coral can ingest microplastics

Waste water treatment plants filter out most (but not all) microbeads into sludge. Some places use that sludge as fertilizer for farms.

Microplastics are in stuff you would not guess. Paper coffee cups have a plastic liner. Clothes put off large amounts of microplastics when washed. Tires put off microplastics. Some exfoliants and other cosmetics contain microplastics as microbeads.

[–] _number8_ 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Deep layer ocean sediment surveys in China (2020) show the presence of plastics in deposition layers far older than the invention of plastics

wtfff

[–] roboticide 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I feel like there could be a few rational explanations to that, but I want someone smarter than me to tell me what exactly they could be...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

If the sediment is <100% consolidated, then water could be carrying microplastics down through the layers, even through microscopic voids.

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