Fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and even frozen excrement have long littered the well-trodden route to the 8,848-meter (29,029-feet) high summit, earning it the name of “the highest dumpster in the world”.
But in the first study of microplastics on Everest, by a research team part of the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, the tiny pollutants were found as high as 8,440 meters above sea level, although concentration levels were higher at the mountain’s base camp.
The findings, which reveal the potential threat to Everest posed by plastic pollutants, were published in the environmental journal One Earth on …
Keep on reading: Researchers find microplastics on top of the world at Everest