http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/arctic-sea-ice-polluted-with-microplastics-1.2660021

Arctic sea ice polluted with microplastics

Pollutants may wind up in Arctic food chain as climate warms, ice melts

CBC News Posted: May 30, 2014 4:33 PM ET Last Updated: May 30, 2014 5:34
PM ET

Arctic sea ice has sopped up and stored large quantities of microplastic
pollution from populated areas in the south, a new study has found.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic from microscopic to
fingernail-sized that have been found polluting oceans and lakes around
the world over the past decade, but not so far north as the Arctic
Ocean. Scientists are concerned about them because they tend to suck up
and concentrate other pollutants in the environment, which enter the
food chain when animals swallow microplastics.

Rachel Obbard, a materials scientist at Dartmouth College in New
Hamphire, discovered that Arctic sea ice was contaminated with
microplastics by accident when she melted the ice in order to count
diatoms ? microscopic algae that live under the ice.

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