1907: In Belgium, an inventive chemist named Leo Baekeland combines the fossil-fuel derivatives phenol and formaldehyde to produce a hard, mouldable substance that will change the course of manufacturing. He calls it Bakelite. The objects made from this new material begin to produce the world’s first microplastics.
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1930s: As softer, cheaper, newer forms of plastic are invented, usage soars.
1940: Some of the earliest known microplastic makes its way to a lake bed in the US. It won’t be found until decades later.
No one is yet thinking about what happens to plastic, as it sheds and cracks, breaking down even as it doesn’t biodegrade.
1950: Global production of plastics hits 2 million tonnes a year. It will be another 54 years before the term microplastics is coined.
2004: The term is coined, by a team led by Richard Thompson, then a marine biologist at the University of Liverpool. His research paper, published in the journal Science, is titled Lost at Sea: Where is All the Plastic?
2009: Microplastics arrive in Antarctica. This will only be discovered in 2020, when researchers from the University of Tasmania pull up and study ice core samples from this period.
2011: The first study on microplastics in freshwater ecosystems is conducted. It finds an average of 37.8 fragments per square metre in sediment samples from Lake Huron (one of North America’s five Great Lakes).
Also in 2011: An international team of researchers identifies the washing of synthetic textiles as a major source. The European Environment Agency estimates that 16% to 35% of the microplastics released into oceans originate in the manufacture and use of synthetic fabrics. EEA estimates, at the time, that 2 lakh to 5 lakh tonnes of microplastics from textiles are entering the global marine environment each year.
2014: Researchers at the Citadel military college in South Carolina discover that the wear and tear of tyres is flinging tonnes of these flakes into the air.
2016: University of Oxford scientists find that deep-sea creatures are ingesting microplastics at depths of up to 1,800 metres. The flakes are found in hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers.
2018: Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences detect large quantities in the Mariana Trench.
2019: A study published in the journal Nature Communications finds high concentrations in rain and snow falling over a pristine stretch of the Pyrenees mountains in France. This acts as early evidence of how far microplastics can travel in the air.
2020: Flakes are found near the summit of Mount Everest.
2023: Scientists from Waseda University find microplastics in the clouds above Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest mountain.
Also in 2023: A study conducted by an international team in the UK finds that, in the absence of the right filtration systems, the recycling of plastics is releasing massive quantities of microplastics into water systems. Their study is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances.
2024: Global plastics production stands at 450 million tonnes a year.
More than half the plastic ever produced has been made since the year 2000. Research over time has found microplastics in the human brain, saliva, blood, breast milk, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, colon and placenta.
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