Microplastics Are Polluting the Ocean at a Shocking Rate

If you throw a polyester sweatshirt in the washing machine, it doesn’t emerge as quite its former self. All that agitation breaks loose plastic microfibers, which your machine flushes to a wastewater treatment facility. Any particles that aren’t filtered out get pumped to sea. Like other forms of microplastic—broken-down bottles and bags, paint chips, and […]

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How Do You Know a Cargo Ship Is Polluting? It Makes Clouds

If you have a habit of perusing satellite imagery of the world’s oceans—and who doesn’t, really?—you might get lucky and spot long, thin clouds, like white slashes across the sea. In some regions, like off the West Coast of the United States, the slashes might crisscross, creating huge hash marks. That’s a peculiar phenomenon known […]

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