Their study, published in the journal Environmental Chemical Letters, joins a growing body of evidence showing that plastic pollution has infiltrated most ecosystems on Earth.
Fragments of plastic smaller than 5mm (around the size of a sesame seed) have been found in the furthest reaches of the planet and most intimate parts of the human body, including the blood, lungs, and placentas of pregnant women.
"To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to detect airborne microplastics in cloud water in both the free troposphere and atmospheric boundary layer,” the scientists wrote.
“Microplastics in the free troposphere are transported and contribute to global pollution,” says lead author of the research, Hiroshi Okochi of Waseda University.
“If the issue of ‘plastic air pollution’ is not addressed proactively, climate change and ecological risks may become a reality, causing irreversible and serious environmental damage in the future.”
“This implies that microplastics may have become an essential component of clouds, contaminating nearly everything we eat and drink via ‘plastic rainfall’,” according to a statement about the study from Waseda University,
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A severe lack of winter rain in the Alps combined with very warm temperatures contributed to record-low snowfall and the massive loss of ice, according to the report.
In early February, snowfall measurements at 1,000 metres above sea level rose slightly above those seen in the less snowy winters of 1964, 1990 and 2007.
From August through to September, the Swiss weather service had to climb to a record altitude of almost 5,300 metres to find the zero-degree ‘freezing point’ or isotherm.
As Switzerland sweltered through a heatwave, the few summer snowfalls melted quickly, failing to strengthen the glaciers, according to SCNAT.
This year the average ice thickness loss in southern Valais and the Engadin Valley is up to three metres - significantly higher than the values recorded in the hot summer of 2003.
Although more snow settled in the winter between the Bernese Oberland and Valais, the area still saw its ice thin by over two metres - an “extremely high” loss.
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The US is an unreliable security partner, what if trump wins next year for example? The only way South Korea (and Taiwan to be fair) can secure their independence and sovereignty is a nuclear deterrent
I’m sure that kind of thing makes the residents of Seoul much less agreeable to getting a nuclear deterrent
Don’t you get it? We’re on the same side, I think the US should stay out of Taiwan and South Korea also, that’s why they need nuclear weapons! Probably Japan too, if history is anything to go by. Vietnam as well
Nuclear Weapons are mostly a Paper Tiger. Scary only on the outlook but as fragile as paper in reality. Yes, Russia, China, US and Japan should stay out of the whole of Korea. Nuclear Technology should be developed independently but not for Bullying nations with it but rather for peaceful purposes. Only through the ouster of the Comprador regimes in both the North and South can Korea be one and sovereign.
Maybe once capitalism finishes winning in Vietnam we can revisit the nukes discussion but under no circumstances can you trust commies with nuclear weapons.
Yeah that’s the reputation the US has - totally unwilling to get into wars against communists.
South Korea is not some contested alliance. They’re the actual Korea the way Taiwan is the actual China. Neither of these places will fall and the US will absolutely go to war for them, and I find it kind of crazy that anyone thinks we wouldn’t.
What in our history suggests we would allow communist states to conquer their last remaining bastions of liberal democracy?
While I understand the science behind the release of the wastewater; I also really do understand why people are so willing to ban this.
It doesn’t matter if it is safe to eat or not. People have a right to not partake in fish from the Fukushima area. Nobody should have the right to conceal origin information about food items in general, particularly not when food may contain things that are potentially impactful to a person’s health.
40 μSv might be a “Safe” exposure over time; but that doesn’t mean it’s completely without health impacts. People are within their rights to avoid that extra dose if they feel the risk is unnecessary; no matter how small that risk may be.
I agree wholeheartedly about not concealing origin information when food may contain things potentially impactful to their health. The difference is that even drinking straight tritiated water (at the Japanese release concentration) as your only beverage for an entire year is 1/10th the exposure you would get from a single mammogram. There is zero potential for any health impacts from this release of tritiated water. I direct your attention to this well-sourced chart from Randall Munroe to give a good visual on different relative radiation doses. One year of drinking tritiated water at a concentration of 1500 Bq/L (the concentration its being released at, and about 1/10th of the WHO limit) gives a dose of approx. 40 μSv, the same as the cross country flight in the above graphic.
You literally get more radiation exposure flying from LA to NYC than you would from spending a year with your only beverage being water they are releasing. I don’t see you advocating for people to not fly cross country in order to reduce their exposure. Sounds like we got a shill for Big Plane right here.
Technically he’s correct about the right, NATO agreed not to expand east back in the day and then violated that. I haven’t seen the evidence that they could bury everyone though.
Technically yes isn’t yes tho. I mean Russia will do anything to justify itself. The difference between NATO expansion and Russian expansion, Russia engages military operations while countries are trying to join NATO to protect themselves from Russia
so to be clear on the original point, NATO hasnt broken any treaty and its ‘expansion’ is people wanting to join so that they dont get invaded by russia
The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was never discussed; it was not raised in those years. I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist in 1991. – Gorbachev
So yeah this is another case of russia bending history to fuel their victim complex.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has proposed outgoing Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra for the post of EU Commissioner for climate action.
In a statement published on Tuesday following an interview with Hoekstra, von der Leyen said he had shown “strong motivation for the post and great commitment to the European Union.”
In a statement on social media platform X, Pascal Canfin, MEP for the centrist Renew Europe group and Chair of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, said that Hoekstra’s candidacy is “not a done deal”, in a sign of a tough hearing ahead.
“Wopke Hoekstra is a former Shell employee and a member of a party that has systematically been trying to sabotage important parts of the European Green Deal such as the Nature Restoration Law,” Left MEP Anja Hazekamp said in the statement.
Von der Leyen confirmed that Hoekstra would steer the EU’s climate policy under the guidance of socialist Maroš Šefčovič, who has inherited Timmermans’ previous responsibilities as European Commission Vice-President for the Green Deal.
When serving as the Dutch finance minister from 2017 and 2022, Hoekstra gained a reputation in Brussels as one of the most vocal critics of shared fiscal burden, rallying a group of so-called “frugal” countries to oppose issuing collective debt in the form of “corona bonds”.
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You are an ignorant blowhard if you believe what you just said. I’m not going to say they are up with the times but what you said is stupid. The fact that mass is done in the local languages instead of Latin was huge! And they also recognize that big bang theory and the sun is the center of our solar system which exists in the Milky Way galaxy that isn’t the center of the universe.
I would hope they recognize the Big Bang theory, given that the idea was first put forward by a Jesuit.
But seriously, a lot of people don’t really get how big the switch from Latin was. My dad attended church pre- and post-Vatican II and said that so many people complained loudly that we’d no longer have mass in a dead language. I guess the Liturgy of the Eucharist used to be done with the priest facing away from the congregation and a lot of people also complained when it was done facing the congregation. God forbid the plebes feel like participants in their own religion.
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