- Scientists from the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre have discovered a new type of plastic pollution which has been dubbed as “plasticrusts”. The study has been published in the journal Science of The Total Environment
- Plasticrust is a layer of plastic encrusted onto ocean rocks.
- In 2016, researchers first observed blue and grey plastic patches on Madeira, a volcanic Portuguese island off northwest Africa. After sampling rocks along the coastline, researchers found that by 2019 the plasticrusts covered 9.46% of the rocky surface.
- According to researchers, the potential impact of plasticrusts is still relatively unknown, but had the potential to affect the island’s animals.
Plastic Crust– a new kind of sea pollution
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