Global Plastic-Embedded Rainfall

"It is raining plastic."
"It wasn't entirely surprising to find them in an urban environment. But when we saw them in the remote areas of the mountain, we started to become a little more surprised at those results."
Gregory Wetherbee study lead researcher, research chemist, U.S. Geological Survey

"We've been collecting snow in places like Whitehorse, Alert and Eureka as well as in southern Ontario and we've found microplastics in all our snow samples, often in microfibre form."
"We've also found them deep in the ocean sediment and in plankton. Everywhere we look, we find it."
"We're finding a good amount especially in the Arctic sediment, since the sedimentation rate [rate by which particles settle down] is quite low versus the lakes."
"It's not a constant source in the Canadian Arctic. There are winds that come from over an urban city where they pick [microplastics] up and transport it to the Arctic. And then in the winter, there is that Arctic haze where you have almost a vortex around that keeps it in."
"While we can say that urban centres are sources, we can't pinpoint. The atmosphere doesn't obey national boundaries, it just goes where it wants."
Liisa Jantunen, researcher, analytical environmental analyst, Environment Canada

@start_stoling

"In my lab, we might spend about 40 percent of the time doing method development, which I would love to not have to do." 
"It's similar to the way we talk about persistent organic chemical pollutants in that it seems as if they're everywhere because they have this ability to transport everywhere."
"They have chemicals on them that can bioaccumulate and are toxic."
Chelsea Rochman, researcher, marine ecosystems, University of Toronto

A plastic bag floats in Lake Ontario on the waterfront in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, June 12, 2019. Justin Trudeau’s government announced plans Monday to ban single-use plastics such as straws and plates in Canada. Cole Burston/Bloomberg

The last two years of research have informed that plastic is raining down in Canada; which is to say rain falling in Canada has minuscule amounts of microplastic within each raindrop and no one has any idea where it has come from or what the final results of its presence will wreak on the environment, much less the plants and animals, including humans. This was an accidental discovery that occurred while geologists were researching the effects of nitrogen pollution and discovered tiny plastic fibres, beads and shards within samples of rainwater collected from Denver, Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, a distance of 1,763 kilometers from Canada.

This is a new area of research that has fairly recently opened; the presence of plastic particles smaller than five millimetres in length -- about the size of a breadcrumb -- but research has revealed an incredibly wide distribution area of plastic pollution in the most remote corners of the Earth. Dr. Jantunen's research into microplastics in the Canadian Arctic and Great Lakes was initiated in 2017 and she accepts the survey's discovery of plastic raining down to be just another aspect of the level to which the planet is inundated with plastic.

It makes common sense that microplastic presence is higher in urban environments like the city of Toronto than it would be in remote regions, due to the numerous sources creating and consuming plastic. Included are laundry clothes dryers and vacuum cleaners which produce microfibres like lint and dust, points out Dr. Jantunen. The further one removes from urban centres, the less the pollution concentration. Dr. Jantunen estimates that for every gram of (Arctic) sediment up to hundreds of microplastic particles could be present, and for each litre, hundreds to thousands of particles.

European researchers discovered earlier this year the presence of tiny plastic fibres in the French Pyrenees mountain regions carried, it appears, by the wind, estimating that France is "blanketed by 2,000 tons of plastic particles" annually. Alarmingly high concentrations of microplastics were discovered by Swiss researchers -- as high as 14,000 particles per litre of snow samples in the Arctic snowfields -- a report published this month details.

When larger pieces of plastic degrade minuscule microplastics eventually result which are buoyant, readily transportable through the atmosphere, and through water systems. No one knows of a certainty where these microplastics are arriving from but evidence in the Canadian Arctic suggest some could originate in Toronto; on the other hand it could just as well be coming from Europe. Identification is difficult in determining where microplastics originate as a result of the lack of technology able to analyze the evidence, points out Dr. Rochman, a researcher in plastic pollutants in freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Not only is there a mystery surrounding the origins of the microplastics insinuating a presence worldwide, but little is also known relating to the potential toxicity of microplastic pollution. Basically, because of their infinitesimally small size, microplastics are capable of entering biochemical pathways within the body. They have been known as "carriers of medication" in mainstream medicine, and little is known yet whether they have any effect or are simply excreted, discarded by the body.

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