美国国家公共电台 NPR Microplastic Found Even In The Air In France's Pyrenees Mountains

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The mountain air over the Pyrenees of France should be about as pure as air can be, yet there's pollution even there. The air carries tiny plastic particles that have traveled with the wind, possibly from hundreds of miles away. Scientists who made this discovery suspect that microplastic could be floating everywhere. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE¹: As plastic degrades, it doesn't just disappear. It breaks into tiny pieces. It ends up in the dust in our homes and in rivers and lakes and oceans. Steve Allen at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland wondered if it also goes up into the sky.

STEVE ALLEN: I don't know if you've ever seen a plastic bag on a fence flapping away until it disappears. We thought that maybe it didn't just disappear, and we started to look for it a bit higher up.

JOYCE: Four and a half thousand feet up a mountain in a remote part of the French Pyrenees, in fact. Allen's team set up collectors there for five months to trap plastic particles as they fell to earth.

S ALLEN: We expected to find some. We didn't expect to find quite as much as we did.

JOYCE: Three hundred and sixty five plastic particles fell on a square meter collector every day. Allen was surprised by that.

S ALLEN: We kind of expected it to be in a city getting blown around, but way out there just was - the numbers was astounding².

JOYCE: Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers found several types of microplastic floating on the wind, fibers³ from clothing and bits from plastic bags, plastic film and packaging material. But they don't know where the particles come from geographically⁴.

DEONIE ALLEN: We know basically nothing about how they move.

JOYCE: Allen's wife and co-researcher Deonie Allen, who works at a French research institution called EcoLab, says scientists do know how dust gets blown, say from the Sahara across the Atlantic. But very few people have studied windblown plastic yet.

D ALLEN: We don't have this sort of material in nature.

JOYCE: Apparently⁵ the plastic isn't local. Only a few small villages lie within the nearest 60 miles of the collection site. Yet the density⁶ of the microplastics collected in the mountains is comparable to that found over the megacities of Paris and Dongguan in China, where similar studies have been done. Deonie Allen says if this much microplastic manages to get halfway⁷ up the Pyrenees mountains, it could theoretically be everywhere.

D ALLEN: We also don't know what they do to humans. We don't know how they form inside soils and how they move. They're a brand new pollution, but there's so much of it. And it's increasing so fast that it's something we really need to start learning about.

JOYCE: Christopher Joyce, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 astounding   

adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词)

参考例句：

• There was an astounding 20% increase in sales. 销售量惊人地增加了20%。
• The Chairman's remarks were so astounding that the audience listened to him with bated breath. 主席说的话令人吃惊，所以听众都屏息听他说。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 fibers   

光纤( fiber的名词复数 )； （织物的）质地； 纤维，纤维物质

参考例句：

• Thesolution of collagen-PVA was wet spined with the sodium sulfate as coagulant and collagen-PVA composite fibers were prepared. 在此基础上，以硫酸钠为凝固剂，对胶原-PVA共混溶液进行湿法纺丝，制备了胶原-PVA复合纤维。
• Sympathetic fibers are distributed to all regions of the heart. 交感神经纤维分布于心脏的所有部分。

4 geographically   

adv.地理学上，在地理上，地理方面

参考例句：

• Geographically, the UK is on the periphery of Europe. 从地理位置上讲，英国处于欧洲边缘。 来自辞典例句
• All these events, however geographically remote, urgently affected Western financial centers. 所有这些事件，无论发生在地理上如何遥远的地方，都对西方金融中心产生紧迫的影响。 来自名作英译部分

5 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

6 density   

n.密集，密度，浓度

参考例句：

• The population density of that country is 685 per square mile.那个国家的人口密度为每平方英里685人。
• The region has a very high population density.该地区的人口密度很高。

7 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。