Beijing, July 15 (reporter Sun Zifa) Springer Nature's international academic journal "Nature Communications" published a new environmental research paper said that road traffic generated by plastic particles pollution spread with the wind, can be transported to remote regions, including the Arctic.

The study models the worldwide spread of microplastic pollution from road traffic in the atmosphere, and estimates show that the total amount of plastic particles arriving in the ocean through air transport is comparable to the total amount deposited in rivers.

As the production rate of new plastic products continues to increase, the amount of plastic waste that is not collected and recycled is increasing, according to the latest research paper. However, the ecological and environmental impacts of increased plastic pollution, and the mechanisms by which it is caused, are less well understood.

To this end, corresponding author Nikolaus Sevangeliou of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research and colleagues combined a global quantitative analysis of road microplastics (produced by tire wear and brake wear) with modeling of atmospheric transport routes to determine the trajectories of these pollutants. Currently, road microplastic emissions account for 30 percent of overall microplastic pollution, with the majority coming from densely populated areas such as the eastern United States, Northern Europe and highly urbanized areas of Southeast Asia.

The authors found that larger particles were deposited near the source of pollution, and conversely, microplastics with diameters of 2.5 micrometers or less were transported further away. The researchers estimate that 52,000 tons of small plastic particles end up in the ocean each year. But about 14 percent land on distant, ice-covered surfaces. That's a concern for sensitive regions like the Arctic, they note, because darkening particles can reduce surface return, which could speed up melting. (Finished)

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