<Anchor>



It was first confirmed in Korea that very small plastics are floating in the air. Research has confirmed that microplastics are present not only inside the house, but also outside the air.



Then, reporter Min-pyo Kim reported on where it comes from and how it will affect our bodies.



<Reporter> This



is an apartment in Seoul.



Equipment that sucks airborne substances is installed in living rooms and outdoors.



[Jin-ah Park / Researcher at the Seoul Institute of Health and Environment: This equipment is a sampling equipment. It's a connection here. The total operating time will be set to 48 hours.] In



this way, since June of last year, 5 domestic houses in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province and 3 outdoor areas near the house have collected suspended substances in the air.



Analysis of 29 samples revealed fine plastics in all samples.



In the case of indoor air at home, an average of 3.02 microplastics were produced on a 1㎥ basis.



The particle size was 166㎛ on average, about three times the thickness of a hair.



In outdoor air, the detection amount was 1.96 on average, which was less than indoors.



[Hyeon-Sook Choi/Researcher at Seoul City Institute of Health and Environment: It is estimated that it occurs in household goods such as fibers that have fallen from clothes while people are active indoors, and furniture made of synthetic fibers.]



It has been estimated that there will be fine plastics in the air, but this is the first time that it has been confirmed through empirical research in Korea.




[Shin Yong-Seung/Director of Seoul City Health and Environment Research Institute: The greatest significance is that we quantified (fine plastics in the air) and produced basic data to evaluate human exposure based on those results.]



This time, the reporters live with Gangseo-gu, Seoul

.

I analyzed the rainwater from Mapo-gu.



For every 100 milliliters of rainwater, 7.27 and 18.15 microplastics were detected, respectively.



This is an experimental result that can explain the so-called'plastic rain' phenomenon in which fine plastics in the air fall to the ground with rainwater.



[Minyoung Chae/Researcher Cesco: Things that float in the air will mix together when it rains and come down.

In rainwater, PP (polypropylene) or PE (polyethylene) materials were the same as in



air

.] In

air and rainwater analysis, only relatively large particles of 20㎛ or more were detected due to the limitations of sampling and analysis equipment.



Fine plastics larger than 20㎛ are likely to be discharged even if they enter the mouth or nose.



However, studies are showing that smaller microplastics can be harmful to the human body.



When 50 nm of electrically positively charged microplastic was injected into the epithelial cells of the alveoli, that is, the epithelial cells of the lungs, the cell morphology was destroyed and died in 1 hour.



If the nanoplastic surface is positively charged for reasons such as heavy metal sticking, lung damage can occur.



[Kim Eung-sam/Professor of Chonnam National University Biology: If you look at this now, it has passed 25 minutes and 30 minutes.

In 45 minutes or an hour, you can see the cell membranes burst out.

This cell death is almost done in an hour.] The



smaller the plastic, the easier it is to enter the human body and the more harmful it is.




Plastic is only a matter of time and is threatening because it is constantly shattering.



[Shim Won-jun / Senior Researcher, Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology: (Styrofoam lid is width and length) It is about 10 cm, 30 cm, and there are hundreds of billions of pieces in one year.

Hundreds of billions.

In one of these lids.

So each garbage is a microplastics factory.]



Plastics' warning is the urgent need to systematically research and respond to how much microplastics are in the air, how much they enter our bodies, and how they affect our bodies.



(Video coverage: Lee Won-sik)