Paint Dust Covers the Upper Layer of the World's Oceans 141
sciencehabit (1205606) writes Even when the sea looks clean, its surface can be flecked with tiny fragments of paint and fiberglass. That's the finding from a study that looked for plastic pollution in the uppermost millimeter of ocean. The microscopic fragments come from the decks and hulls of boats, and they could pose a threat to zooplankton, an important part of the marine food web.
Math (Score:4, Interesting)
On average, a liter of water from the microlayer contained 195 particles—this concentration is 10 to 100 times higher than microplastic particles in water collected by other methods.
One litre of water is 1,000,000 cubic millimetres. Given a depth of 1 mm that would cover 1 square meter. So therefore 195 particles per square meter. They don't go into how big these particles are. The issue is that these particle float and therefore would be concentrated in the upper 1 millimetre of water. They have not shown it is a problem.
Looking at the positive side of this (Score:4, Interesting)