“You can find plastics contaminating the environment at virtually every location on the globe, and in a few short decades, we’ve gone from seeing plastic as a wonderful benefit to considering it a threat,” Charles Rolsky, director of science for Plastic Oceans International, who is presenting the new research at an upcoming virtual meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), said in a ACS statement.
Using a mass spectrometer, they found every sample to hold traces of polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polyethylene (PE), all common plastic substances. They also found traces of bisphenol A (BPA), a material used in food containers.