I saw somewhere that there’s huge amount of plastic on the bottom of the ocean but is pressure a factor for how fast microplastic is released into the surroundings?
In: Chemistry
It depends on many factors and also on what kind of plastic. There are many types of polymers (plastics), with different levels of resistance. Degradation of polymers mostly occurs due to exposure to heat, light, different chemicals, and bacteria and also for mechanical friction. At the bottom of the oceans occurs at a slower (much slower) speed than for instance on the surface. This is due to many factors but mostly because of the absence of sunlight (UV radiation) but also because of little oxygen, lower temperature, etc.
If you would like to know more on this, here are 2 very informative peer-reviewed studies:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14538-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14538-z)
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-018-9195-y](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-018-9195-y)
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