Reacción a "High concentrations of nanoplastics found in Atlantic Ocean"

The article addresses one of the most unknown and methodologically complex dimensions of marine plastic pollution: nanoplastics. Their detection, analysis and quantification continue to face enormous challenges throughout the whole process, from material preparation and sampling to processing and quantification. This work represents a relevant advance by providing empirical data on bulk nanoplastics at different depths and ocean regions (coastal zones and areas inside and outside a subtropical gyre), with which the authors estimate nanoplastic loading on a larger scale.

Although the study has limitations inherent to the sampling and the volume analyzed, it contributes significantly to reducing knowledge gaps. The results reinforce the idea that coastal areas act as important accumulation areas and suggest that, by incorporating the smaller size fraction, the total mass of plastics in the ocean would be much higher than previously estimated.

This work also offers a critical lesson: plastics do not disappear, but fragment into invisible but persistent particles. So cleaning up is not enough. The only way to reverse this trend is through preventive management, reducing the production and unnecessary use of plastics, incorporating criteria of essentiality, and establishing more ambitious regulations on traceability, composition and final destination of the material.

All this is precisely what is at stake in the negotiations of the Global Plastics Treaty that resume next month in Geneva. This type of scientific evidence should guide ambitious and structural decisions.