Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plastic?

By Richard C. Thompson, Y. Olsen, Richard P. Mitchell, A. Davis, S. Rowland, A. John, D. McGonigle, A. Russell. Science, 2004

6,417 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/41499ba3512186f9c8b00fc03438e09639bb5509

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. S. Al-thawadi
2. Richard C. Thompson
3. J. C. Prata
4. L. Hoogenboom

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. A. Lusher
2. Richard C. Thompson
3. L. Hoogenboom
4. Colin R. Janssen
5. L. Van Cauwenberghe
6. J. C. Prata
7. S. Al-thawadi
8. A. Andrady

In Pollution

1. A. Lusher
2. L. Hoogenboom
3. Richard C. Thompson
4. Colin R. Janssen
5. L. Van Cauwenberghe
6. J. C. Prata
7. F. Galgani
8. S. Al-thawadi

Citations in the corpus

• Trophic transfer of microplastics does not affect fish personality (2017, background): “Their small size and variable densities mean they occur throughout marine (Law & Thompson, 2014) and freshwater (Eerkes-Medrano, Thompson, & Aldridge, 2015) environments and are bioavailable to a broad range of organisms (Thompson et al., 2004).”
• Accumulation and fragmentation of plastic debris in global environments (2009, background): “Smaller fragments can be ingested by birds, fish and even invertebrates (Thompson et al. 2004; Van Franeker et al. 2005).”
• Microplastics in Taihu Lake, China. (2016, background): “The small particles (<5 mm) are defined as microplastic (Thompson et al., 2004).”
• Microplastic ingestion by zooplankton. (2013, background): “microplastics – small plastic <5 mm in diameter – also negatively impact upon marine biota [4].”
• Organic micropollutants in marine plastics debris from the open ocean and remote and urban beaches. (2011, background): “Others are physically degraded to microscopic pieces (Thompson et al., 2004; Browne et al., 2008).”
• Effects of biofouling on the sinking behavior of microplastics (2017, background): “However, the presence of low density microplastic in nearshore subtidal sediments (e.g. Thompson et al 2004, Vianello et al 2013) and of lowdensity plastic sheets at the seabottom(Holmström 1975) strongly suggest that some portion of floating microplastic remains at sea for a time sufficient to…”
• All is not lost: deriving a top-down mass budget of plastic at sea (2017, background): “This approach complements recent studies that estimate the global inventory from the bottomup using ocean measurements (Thompson et al 2004, Eriksen et al 2014, Cózar et al 2014, van Sebille et al 2015).”
• Enhanced desorption of persistent organic pollutants from microplastics under simulated physiological conditions. (2014, background): “20 mm in diameter (Thompson et al., 2004).”