Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Science. 2021 Jul 2;373(6550):51-55. doi: 10.1126/science.abb0354.
Plastic contamination of the environment is a global problem whose magnitude justifies the consideration of plastics as emergent geomaterials with chemistries not previously seen in Earth's history. At the elemental level, plastics are predominantly carbon. The comparison of plastic stocks and fluxes to those of carbon reveals that the quantities of plastics present in some ecosystems rival the quantity of natural organic carbon and suggests that geochemists should now consider plastics in their analyses. Acknowledging plastics as geomaterials and adopting geochemical insights and methods can expedite our understanding of plastics in the Earth system. Plastics also can be used as global-scale tracers to advance Earth system science.
塑料对环境的污染是一个全球性问题，其严重程度使得塑料成为具有地球历史上前所未有的化学特性的新兴地质材料。从元素水平来看，塑料主要由碳组成。将塑料存量和流量与碳的存量和流量进行比较后发现，一些生态系统中塑料的数量与天然有机碳的数量相当，这表明地球化学家现在应该在其分析中考虑塑料。承认塑料是地质材料，并采用地球化学的见解和方法，可以加快我们对地球系统中塑料的理解。塑料也可以用作全球尺度示踪剂来推进地球系统科学的发展。
