Multi-Decadal Increase in Plastic Particles in Coastal Ocean Sediments
This paper, the fourth chapter of my PhD dissertation, was published in the journal Science Advances in 2019. It is the first paper to find a temporal increase of microplastics in marine sediments. The microplastics, isolated from a sediment core, increase exponentially from 1945-2010. This exponential increase correlates strongly with the exponential increase in worldwide plastic production over that same time period. This paper garnered widespread international media attention, some of which are linked to on this site.