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2024-11-11

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7,000 Microplastics Studies Show We Have One Really Big Problem (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Biggest sources:

7.6 Mt from macro plastics breaking down
1.3 Mt from paint
1.0 Mt from tyres

10-40 Mt released into environment/year, and increasing.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm kinda surprised that more comes from paint than tires.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think it depends on measure, if im not mistaken, by weight arohnd 50% of microplastics are tire dust.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Also depends on where you’re measuring. They make up a ton of the plastics in stormwater runoff for example. Sometimes up to 95% from what I found. And that stormwater often ends up in our drinking water.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Still both from automobile infrastructure. /c/fuckcars bleeding into every Lemmy...