Tiny pieces of plastic found in Arctic snow 北极下起“塑料雪”

邹霞

Microplastics， those common relics of modern times， have seemingly invaded every part of the planet today， including the most remote reaches of the Arctic. Scientists have been puzzling over how this flood of pollution makes its way to such distant locations far from the urban centers where it's generated. A new study finds a surprising route for the tiny particles—they're ferried in the air and finally fall in the Arctic as snow.

Large amounts of plastic fragments and fibers are landing atop ice floes in the Fram Strait—an unpopulated expanse of ocean between Greenland and the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard，reports the study， published in Science Advances.

Scientists from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research measured microplastics in snow samples from this remote location during research cruises from 2015 to 2017， and they concluded that the microplastics could only have fallen from the sky. The study raises concerns about how much microplastics contaminate（污染） the atmosphere， posing a potential health risk to people and animals that breathe them in.

“I think the exposure pathway for us， the main exposure pathway， may be the air that we breathe，” says Melanie Bergmann， a marine ecologist from the Alfred Wegener Institute and leading author on the new paper.

Although it's remote， the Arctic is far from pristine（處于原始状态的）， with much of the world's pollution eventually making its way there. Bergmann and her colleagues had been studying plastics on the Arctic sea floor since 2002. Over the past decade or so， they noticed huge increases in the amount they were seeing， including a tenfold rise at one station.

So they started to look for microplastics in the Arctic water column. Large amounts turned up everywhere they looked. In deep sea sediments（沉积物）， they found about 6，000 particles in every 2.2 pounds of mud. Sea ice was even more laden—as much as 12，000 particles per 34 ounces of melted ice. And other researchers found that Arctic surface waters had the highest microplastic concentrations of all the world's oceans.

阅读检测

1. What has been making scientists puzzled？

A. What the microplastics consisted of.

B. What caused the pollution.

C. When the microplastics were generated.

D. How the microplastics got to the Arctic.

2. What can we infer from the last paragraph？

A. Pollution of microplastics was very serious.

B. Arctic surface waters were less polluted.

C. The Arctic still remains untouched.

D. The amount of microplastics has decreased.

语言学习

难句分析

The study raises concerns about how much microplastics contaminate the atmosphere， posing a potential health risk to people and animals that breathe them in. 这项研究引起了人们对微塑料对大气造成多大程度污染的担忧，由此对吸入它们的人和动物造成了潜在的健康风险。

本句是一个复合句。The study raises concerns是主句，how much引导的是宾语从句，posing...in作结果状语，that breathe them in是定语从句。