Tik Root | National Geographic
In 2014 biologist John Weinstein and his graduate students went looking for microplastics—the small bits of degraded plastic that researchers have discovered are spread throughout the environment.
The team was based at The Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina, where Weinstein is a professor. Working in a coastal city, they expected to find at least some evidence of microplastics, which are swept into the ocean. And sure enough, samples kept turning up.