Microplastics found in snow in remotest Siberia, ‘risking health’ of humans and wildlife

Scientists are increasingly worried that microplastics pose a risk to human health and marine life, Jane Dalton writes

Siberian snow was contaminated with plastics (AFP via Getty Images)

Microplastics have been found in snow in Siberia, one of the world’s remotest regions, in a sign of how far damaging human-made pollution has pervaded the environment.

Russian scientists are trying to understand the scale of the potential threat it is causing.

The experts at Tomsk State University found that snow polluted with the microplastics melts and seeps into the ground.

The researchers gathered snow samples from 20 different Siberian regions - from the Altai mountains near Mongolia in the east to the Arctic, and said their preliminary findings confirmed that airborne plastic fibres were turning up in snow in these wildernesses.

“It’s clear that it’s not just rivers and seas that are involved circulating microplastics around the world, but also soil, living creatures and even the atmosphere,” said Yulia Frank, scientific director at the university’s Microplastics Siberia centre.

Microplastics, which are created when bigger pieces of plastic litter break down over time, are increasingly being found in the air, food, drinking water and wildlife, such as puffins.

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Scientists are increasingly worried they may pose a risk to human health and marine life.

The Tomsk university team are now studying the snow samples to understand to what degree population density, the proximity of roads and other human activity contributes to the pollution.

In 2019, a German-Swiss team of researchers discovered that microscopic particles of plastic were falling out of the sky with snow in the Arctic.

They found more than 10,000 of them per litre in a region considered one of the world’s last pristine environments.

The disclosure suggested that microplastics are carried around the planet in atmospheric winds, and that people even breathe them in.

The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the Arctic snow.

In 2018, microplastics were found off Scotland, in important feeding waters for basking sharks, gannets, puffins, razorbills andshearwaters.

Microplastics easily absorb chemical additives and contaminants, and are easily ingested.

Danil Vorobyov, of Tomsk State University, collects snow samples (via REUTERS)

Scientists fear that most sea creatures have eaten them at some point.

Tomsk scientists have previously found microplastics in the digestive systems of fish caught in Siberian rivers, confirming that the Arctic Ocean is polluted with microscopic plastics.

“Siberia is absolutely under-researched in this aspectand our [Russia’s] interest in this problem comes late compared with the rest of the world,” Dr Frank said.

She told The Siberian Times: “People have been using plastic for over a century-and-a-half. Synthetic polymers degrade poorly, and many countries have not yet come to collecting and disposing of this material.

“So more and more products of its decomposition - microplastics - are accumulating in the environment.

“A significant amount of microplastics is known to end up in freshwater and marine systems. This is confirmed by our research.

“The task of the new project is to assess the concentration of synthetic microparticles in solid and liquid precipitation. There have been no such studies in Russia yet.”

Last summer, wildfires in Siberia were thought to have been sparked by a freak heatwave, a symptom of the climate crisis.