More than two-thirds of the world’s population lives near the coast. While the ocean has long been considered a sink for plastic pollution, breaking waves eject sea spray into the air, allowing plastic to enter the atmosphere. The new Emerging Field project “Marine Micro/Nanoplastics: Emission, Fate and Health Impacts” (AERIAL) poses three fundamental questions: How much plastic do waves release into the atmosphere, where is it transported, and what risks does it pose to humans?
Plastic from the ocean: How much, where to, and how dangerous?
By bringing ocean processes into the laboratory and linking emission experiments with transport modeling and health studies, the project will, for the first time, integrate emissions, transport, and health effects within a consistent framework. The insights gained will fundamentally change our understanding of global plastic pathways and human exposure, and will lay the groundwork for future air quality forecasting.
The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is funding the AERIAL project with approximately 4.8 million euros over the next five years as part of the excellence initiative excellent=austria. The project is coordinated at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). From the University of Vienna, the participants are Andreas Stohl, Professor at the Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, and Lea Ann Dailey, Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The oceans: a sink, but also a source of plastic
“We aim to initiate a paradigm shift in which the ocean is no longer viewed solely as a sink for plastic, but as a central source that re-releases plastic into the atmosphere. This creates a new understanding of emissions, global transport, and the health impacts of micro- and nanoplastics,” says Markus Holzner, the project coordinator from BOKU, about the goals of the Emerging Field.
“There are indeed estimates of microplastic emissions from both land and sea into the atmosphere. However, these are highly uncertain,” explains meteorologist Stohl from the University of Vienna. “To improve these estimates, we need a much better understanding of the processes involved in the emissions. AERIAL is working on precisely those physical fundamentals needed to improve process understanding. We will then use the improved emissions to more accurately assess the global atmospheric burden of microplastics,” Stohl says.
Lea Ann Dailey, project partner from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Faculty of Life Sciences, explains: "We know that the oceans are full of plastic debris. We also know that this plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces until they eventually become small enough to breath in. What we don't know is how much plastic is transferred from sea water to the air through the action of breaking waves. AERIAL will develop new physics to understand the mechanisms of micro- and nanoplastic transfer from sea water to air. This will enable more accurate estimates of the amounts we inhale. My group will determine the concentrations at which inhaled micro- and nanoplastics, which are coated with biomolecules from the sea, will become hazardous to lung health."
Establishing new research fields at Austria’s research institutions
As part of the excellent=austria excellence initiative, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is funding six new Emerging Field consortia with a total of around 35 million euros over the next five years. In these six new Emerging Fields, researchers from eleven universities and non-university research institutions are working together. The goal is to implement cooperative projects on research questions with particularly high innovation potential that can trigger a paradigm shift in their field.
The funding creates attractive conditions for close collaboration at the participating institutions, and researchers gain the freedom to pursue promising approaches and higher-risk ideas. The new Emerging Fields focus on design and art, cancer research, mathematics, environmental research, molecular biology, and behavioral research.
The University of Vienna is involved in four of the new Emerging Field consortia. In each consortium, teams of up to 30 scientists collaborate over a period of five years.
