HOW
Nanoplastics ENTER THE HUMAN BODY By Erica Cirino
We are no better protected from plasticized air outdoors than we are indoors . Minuscule plastic fibers , fragments , foam , and films are shed from plastic stuff and are perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere . Rain flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth . Plastic-filled snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen , Germany , and remote regions like the Arctic and Swiss Alps alike .
Wind and storms carry particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens , even hundreds , of miles before depositing them back on Earth . Dongguan , China ; Paris , France ; London , England ; and other metropolises teeming with people are enveloped in air perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small enough to lodge themselves in human lungs .
Urban regions are especially replete with what scientists believe could be one of the most hazardous varieties of particulate pollution : plastic fragments , metals , and other materials that have shed off synthetic tires as a result of the normal friction caused by brake pads and asphalt roads , and from enduring weather and time . Like the plastic used to manufacture consumer items and packaging , synthetic tires may contain any number of a manufacturer ’ s proprietary blend of poisons meant to improve a plastic product ’ s appearance and performance .
Tire particles from the world ’ s billions of cars , trucks , bikes , tractors , and other vehicles escape into air , soil , and water bodies . Scientists are just beginning to understand the grave danger : In 2020 , Washington State researchers determined that the presence of 6PPD-quinone , a byproduct of rubber-stabilizing chemical 6PPD , is playing a major factor in a mysterious long-term die-off of coho salmon in the U . S . Pacific Northwest . When Washington ’ s fall rains herald spawning salmon ’ s return from sea to stream , the precipitation also washes car tire fragments and other plastic particles into these freshwater ecosystems . In recent years , up to 90 percent of all salmon returning to spawn in this region have died — a number much greater than is considered natural , according to local researchers from the University of Washington , Tacoma . As University of Washington environmental chemist Zhenyu Tian explained in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting , 6PPD-quinone appears to be a key culprit : “ You put this chemical , this transformation product , into a fish tank , and coho die … really fast .”
While other researchers have previously searched for , and detected , microplastic dispersed in indoor and outdoor air , a study by Alvise Vianello , an Italian scientist and professor at Aalborg University in Denmark , was the first to do so using a mannequin emulating human
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