Microplastic particles can be found in the marine atmosphere, even in the world’s most isolated regions. These minuscule particles originate from land but are also released back into the atmosphere from the ocean, according to a study led by Dr. Barbara Scholz-Böttcher of the University of Oldenburg, with collaboration from German and Norwegian researchers. The team studied air samples from several locations on the Norwegian coast extending to the Arctic. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
“With our study, we present data on the mass load of different types of plastic in the marine atmosphere for the first time,” said Isabel Goßmann, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oldenburg’s Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) and first author of the paper. The research team collected the samples during an expedition with the Research Vessel Heincke in 2021.
The northernmost destination was Bear Island, the most southerly island of the Svalbard archipelago which lies halfway between the mainland and the archipelago’s largest island, Spitsbergen. The team used two different devices to collect air samples. The devices actively pumped in the air and were mounted on the bow of the research vessel at a height of twelve meters.