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Road hazard: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

GreenBiz

Researchers are only beginning to uncover the toxic cocktail of chemicals, microplastics and heavy metals hidden in car and truck tires. But experts say these tire emissions are a significant source of air and water pollution and may be affecting humans as well as wildlife.

Pollution 450
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Autonomous Draper Drone to detect microplastics in the water

Inhabitat - Innovation

Microplastic pollution is everywhere, but its size—less than five millimeters in length—makes the threat almost invisible to the naked eye.

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Brazilian group presents novel method of analyzing microplastic pollution

Envirotec Magazine

The last decade has seen some progress with studying plastic pollution, but there are still significant challenges, such as a lack of comparability of reported results, especially when it comes to microplastic particles. Few studies of pollution by MPs have been published in Brazil, especially regarding inland aquatic areas.

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Microplastics accelerate cell death at 3 times the normal rate, study says

Inhabitat - Innovation

Researchers from the University Medical Centre (UMC) Utrecht recently announced that cells exposed to microplastics experience cell death three times faster than those that are not. With microplastic pollution everywhere, the findings are sobering.

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Study maps human uptake of microplastics across 109 countries

Envirotec Magazine

Indonesians eat more microplastics per month than any other country, said the study, with most of it coming from seafood (image credit: raulbaldean / Shutterstock.com). That is a 59-fold increase in daily microplastic consumption from 1990 to 2018, the date range used for the models. grams per month, while the lowest is Paraguay at 0.85

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Using microbes to remove microplastics

Envirotec Magazine

Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed a seemingly new technique to trap and recover microplastics. The method uses bacterial biofilms, a sticky substance created by micro-organisms, to trap microplastic particles. In bioreactors, this makes the microplastics more convenient to collect, according to Liu.

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How old is that microplastic? A new way to estimate the age of microplastics in the upper ocean

Envirotec Magazine

Researchers have developed a new way to estimate the age of microplastics found in the upper oceans. The team – from Kyushu University and Asahi Kasei Corporation – applied their new method to estimate the age of microplastics found in nearshore and offshore sites in the North Pacific Ocean.