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Fluffy rivers: how our clothes can harm rivers and the oceans
journal contribution
posted on 2022-05-31, 12:23 authored by Thomas StantonThomas Stanton, Matthew Johnson, Rachel Louise Gomes, Paul Nathanail, William MacNaughtan, Paul KayMicroplastics are one of the most well-known types of environmental pollution. A microplastic is any piece of plastic smaller than 5 mm (about the size of one of the circles on top of a Lego® block). Microplastics come in a variety of shapes and they can be eaten by even the smallest animals, blocking their stomachs and intestines. Many of the clothes that we wear are made from microplastic fibers. These fibers are released from our clothes when we wear and wash them, and they can eventually end up in the environment. We collected water samples from three rivers in the UK over 12 months, to see if they contained microplastic fibers. All the rivers contained clothing fibers, but most of the fibers were not made from plastics. Natural fibers made from materials like cotton (from plants) and wool (from sheep) were much more common than plastic fibers.
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Frontiers for Young MindsVolume
10Publisher
Frontiers Media SAVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Frontiers Media under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2022-04-26Publication date
2022-05-25Copyright date
2022eISSN
2296-6846Publisher version
Language
- en