Environment
The Super Polluted Rhine Washes 191 Million Plastic Particles Out to Sea Every Day
The river’s microplastics concentrations are “among the highest so far studied worldwide,” says a researcher.
Is any ocean, river, lake, or even dang puddle safe from plastic pollution?
Certainly not the Rhine, as it’s the latest body of water found to be choked with microplastics. Researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland sampled 11 locations along roughly 500 miles of the river’s surface from Basel to Rotterdam. Everywhere they dipped they found plastic—beads, shards, and fibers, in concentrations as dense as 3.9 million pieces per square kilometer, they write in Scientific Reports.