Article content

It’s been raining plastic in Canada, researchers have found in the last two years.

And no one knows where it’s coming from. Or what it can do.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or It’s raining plastic in Canada, scientists say. But no one knows the source or toxicity Back to video

A U.S. survey published in May, made headlines around the world last week due to its eye-catching title, “It is raining plastic.” According to the survey, geologists researching the effects of nitrogen pollution, unwittingly found tiny plastic fibres, beads and shards within rainwater samples collected from the remote slopes of the Rocky Mountain National Park in Denver, Colorado, located 1,763 km away from Canada.

“It wasn’t entirely surprising to find them in an urban environment,” said Gregory Wetherbee, the study’s lead researcher, “but when we saw them in the remote areas of the mountain, we started to become a little more surprised at those results.”

Although the topic of microplastics — plastic particles smaller than five millimetres long, the size of a breadcrumb — is one in its infancy, research into the topic has proven the extent to which plastic pollution has pervaded the planet’s most remote corners.