[titzer]

> a lot of the ecological heavy lifting / biogeochemical nutrient cycling is really carried out by microbes

What really worries me is what is going to happen when all those millions of tons of microplastics become nanoplastics and are spread far enough to become part of the foodchain, even down at the microbial level. The dark end of that space is pretty terrifying for life on Earth, IMHO.

[cbkeller]

Interesting point. It looks like there may be negative consequences for eukaryotic algae / phytoplankton [e.g., 1], but on the plus side some prokaryotes are able to usefully metabolize plastics and "bioremediate" the problem a bit [e.g., 2]

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166445X1... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-018-9195-y