Plastic is toxic for a variety of reasons; sometimes it may be due to the chemicals added to it, such as plasticizers or UV screens. But plastic on its own is also toxic, especially when it breaks down to micro, nano, and then molecular plastic.
Partially combusted carbon (PCC) comes from the burning of fossil fuels.
12 billion tonnes of oil and gas
8 billion metric tonnes of Coal
1 billion metric tonnes of trees
0.3 billion tonnes of dirty bunker fuel oil
With the exception of gas, all of the fossil fuels generate partially combusted carbon, especially trees, coal, and bunker fuel oil. The carbon particles measuring a few microns in size that float turn snow and ice a dark colour at the poles, and this is responsible for 30% of snow and ice melt.
Most of the carbon ends up in the world’s oceans, where it floats on the surface. The carbon acts like a sponge and sucks up the toxic lipophilic chemicals, like oxybenzone, PCBs, PBDE, herbicides, and pesticides. The particles become food for the plankton, which are the root of the planet’s food chain and life support system.
We sailed our research vessel, s/v Copepod, across the Atlantic Ocean in 2022 and ran the world’s largest citizen science project to measure particle pollution. We found up to 1000 particles of carbon in every litre of water in the middle of the Atlantic. In addition, we found less than 1 plankton animal in 80 litres of water. There should have been at least 1 in 1 litre of water. Our conclusion is that the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean is almost dead.
All facilities burning fossil fuels must be fitted with particle filters to stop the carbon from getting into the atmosphere and water. This is an easy fix, but it is not being done.
The photo shows the contents of 100 ml of seawater from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The scale is 5000mm, smallest visible particle is 20 um, maybe 100 times more particles will be smaller than 20um and as such are not visible in the photo,
