
Plastic Rain Is the New Acid Rain - blue_devil
https://www.wired.com/story/plastic-rain-is-the-new-acid-rain/
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totetsu
"After collecting rainwater and air samples for 14 months, they calculated
that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic particles fall into 11 protected
areas in the western US each year. That’s the equivalent of over 120 million
plastic water bottles. “We just did that for the area of protected areas in
the West, which is only 6 percent of the total US area,”" "30 percent of the
sample particles were microbeads, tiny synthetic spheres that the United
States banned from beauty products in 2015."

"researchers .. speculate that the microbeads are coming from industrial
paints and coatings. If these are sprayed, they could easily spew the
microbeads into the atmosphere, "

"the stuff never truly goes away, it just gets shredded into smaller bits that
disperse all over the world, perhaps spending many years cycling through
different systems—air, land, and sea."

