A ship’s container lost overboard in the North Atlantic has resulted in printer cartridges washing up everywhere from the coast of Florida to northern Norway, a new study has shown.
A ship’s container lost overboard in the North Atlantic has resulted in printer cartridges washing up everywhere from the coast of Florida to northern Norway, a new study has shown.
It has also resulted in the items weathering to form microplastics that are contaminated with a range of metals such as titanium, iron and copper.
The spillage is thought to have happened around 1,500 km east of New York, in January 2014, with the first beached cartridges reported along the coastline of the Azores in September the same year.
Since then, around 1,500 more have been reported on social media, with the greatest quantities along the coastlines of the UK and Ireland but also as far south as Cape Verde and north to the edge of the Arctic Circle.
Read more at University of Plymouth
Image: An ink cartridge washed up on a beach in Cornwall and recovered by the Lost at Sea Project (Credit: Tracey Williams, Lost at Sea Project)
