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Tiny particles of plastic have been found in high concentrations in snow samples from the Swiss Alps, parts of Germany and the Arctic, even places as remote as the island of Svalbard and in snow on drifting ice floes. These microplastics may have drifted there on wind currents.

鈥淚t鈥檚 readily apparent that the majority of the microplastic in the snow comes from the air,鈥� says Melanie Bergmann at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. She says that this raises questions about how much plastic humans are inhaling.

The team melted samples of snow and poured them through a filter, then examined the trapped residue with an infrared microscope. Depending on the type of plastic, different wavelengths of infrared light are absorbed and reflected.

They found the highest concentrations of these plastics in samples near a rural road in Bavaria, which contained various types of rubber used in things like car tyres. In the Arctic, they primarily found nitrile rubber, acrylates and paint. These microplastics are about the same size as grains of pollen, which can be transported by air from places near the equator to the Arctic.

Bergmann and her colleagues say a major portion of the microplastic in Europe, and even more in the Arctic, comes from the atmosphere and snow. This additional transport route could also explain the high amounts of microplastic that we have found in Arctic sea ice and the deep sea in previous studies, she says.

鈥淥nce we鈥檝e determined that large quantities of microplastic can also be transported by the air, it naturally raises the question as to whether and how much plastic we鈥檙e inhaling,鈥� says Bergmann.