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Microplastics and Nanoplastics

Table 3 Atmospheric small microplastics (SMP) budget

From: A mass budget and box model of global plastics cycling, degradation and dispersal in the land-ocean-atmosphere system

 

Mean global BL height

Mean global FT height

Area

BL SMP

FT SMP

km

km

km2

Tg

Tg

Ocean

0.25

13

3.62 108

0.013

0.0014

Land

0.75

13

1.48 108

0.016

0.0005

Total

   

0.031

  1. Mean ± 1σ SMP concentrations in the BL (boundary layer) (144 ± 124 ng m− 3 for outdoors locations) and FT (free troposphere) (0.3 ± 0.2 ng m− 3) are from Allen et al. [25], assuming a mean SMP size of 70 μm for SMP in the BL, based on Brahney et al. [19]
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