Microplastics are everywhere: they trickle onto the floor, onto meals, travel thousands of kilometers around the world and last for centuries. And what does man do?
When Elke Fischer sets out with her team for a field study in the Hamburg area, everyone has to slip into cotton clothing. “We look as if we were harvest workers on a French winery,” says the geographer from the University of Hamburg. “The only thing I couldn’t expect from my team was the clogs.” The scientist collects samples of water, air or soil and looks for microplastics in them. Since fibers are constantly coming off synthetic clothing and the measurement results would be falsified, Fischer was forced to call for an organic dress code.