Plastic litter is an ever-increasing global issue and one of this generation's key environmental challenges. Microplastics have reached oceans via river transport on a global scale, but outside two mega-cities, Paris (France) and Dongguan (China), there is a lack of information on atmospheric microplastic deposition or transport. Here we present the observations of atmospheric microplastic deposition in a remote, pristine, mountain catchment (French Pyrenees). We analyse five months of samples representing atmospheric wet and dry deposition and identify fibres up to ~750 µm long and fragments ≤300µm as microplastics. We document relative daily counts of 249 fragments, 73 films and 44 fibres per square metre depositing on the catchment. Air mass trajectory analysis shows microplastic transport through the atmosphere over a distance of up to 95km. We suggest that microplastics can reach and affect remote, sparsely inhabited areas through atmospheric transport.

No abstract