A new technique which was developed by Columbia University, has shown that there are up to 100 times more plastic pieces floating in the water, than originally thought.
A standard litre of water was originally detected to contain 240,000 detectable plastic shards. However, data now shows that a standard bottle now contains as many as 370,000 pieces were found.
A new category has been developed by scientists for plastic pollution, known as nanoparticles. These are created when microplastics are broken down further.
Nine out of every 10 plastics were found to be nanoplastics, and smaller than one micrometre or micron, which is one millionth of a metre, or 1/25,000th of an inch.
“It is not totally unexpected to find so much of this stuff. The idea is that the smaller things get, the more of them there are", Naixin Qian, a Columbia graduate student in chemistry, and lead author of the study said.
Despite these discoveries, the amount of plastic found in the water itself, may be even higher than this team have said, as the seven types of plastic can only account for approximately 10% of all plastics found.
Scientists have found that microplastics account for more water pollution than smaller chunks by weight. But the number of tiny shards is a cause for concern.
This study was also published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
