Nanoplastic concentrations across the North Atlantic

Abstract Plastic pollution of the marine realm is widespread, with most scientific attention given to macroplastics and microplastics 1,2 . By contrast, ocean nanoplastics (<1 μm) remain largely unquantified, leaving gaps in our understanding of the mass budget of this plastic size class 3–5 . Here we measure nanoplastic concentrations on an ocean-basin scale along a transect crossing the North Atlantic from the subtropical gyre to the northern European shelf. We find approximately 1.5–32.0 mg m −3 of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) nanoplastics throughout the entire water column. On average, we observe a 1.4-fold higher concentration of nanoplastics in the…