{"id":10856,"date":"2020-09-01T08:56:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T05:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=10856"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:13","slug":"the-atlantic-ocean-has-been-swamped-by-microplastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/09\/01\/the-atlantic-ocean-has-been-swamped-by-microplastics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Atlantic Ocean Has Been Swamped by Microplastics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Plastic pollution in the planet\u2019s oceans is bad, which is hardly news. Yet it is far worse than commonly assumed, say scientists at the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers, who have published their findings in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-020-17932-9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new study<\/a>, say that there is up to 21 million tons of tiny plastic particles of the three most common types of plastics near the water\u2019s surface across the Atlantic ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe combined mass of just the three most-littered plastics (polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene) of 32\u2013651\u2009\u00b5m size-class suspended in the top 200\u2009m of the Atlantic Ocean is 11.6\u201321.1 Million Tonnes,\u201d the scientists explain. \u201cConsidering that plastics of other sizes and polymer types will be found in the deeper ocean and in the sediments, our results indicate that both inputs and stocks of ocean plastics are much higher than determined previously,\u201d they stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In all, the amount of plastic particles in the Atlantic ocean as a whole is estimated to be at least 200 million tons, which is 10 times more than previous estimates had it, based on the calculations of plastic waste floating around in waters in coastal areas. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sustainability-times.com\/environmental-protection\/the-atlantic-ocean-has-been-swamped-by-microplastics\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plastic pollution in the planet\u2019s oceans is bad, which is hardly news. Yet it is far worse than commonly assumed, say scientists at the National Oceanography Centre in the United&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}