When marine biologist Richard Thompson and his students analyzed samples of beach sand over 20 years ago, they were surprised to find countless small multicolored pieces of plastic mixed in.
When marine biologist Richard Thompson and his students analyzed samples of beach sand over 20 years ago, they were surprised to find countless small multicolored pieces of plastic mixed in. Thompson, a professor at the University of Plymouth, dubbed the fragments “microplastics” and published the first-ever paper on the subject in Science magazine in 2004.
Since that landmark study, more than 7,000 papers have come out about microplastics, including one coauthored by Thompson that was published in Science last month and warned that the tiny particles pose a growing biological threat to many species, including humans. The rate of global plastic production has roughly doubled in the last two decades. Without action at a global level, Thompson has written, plastic production could triple by 2060.
“Nobody’s saying there’s no safe way to use plastics” he said in an interview with Yale Environment 360. “It’s just that we need to start making them to be safer and more sustainable than we have done so far.”
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
Photo Credit: Richard Thompson University of Plymouth
