#parent material

After the protoplastic materials Parkesine and Bakelite, polypropylene was found by the future Nobel laureate Giulio Natta in 1954 and began to be manufactured in 1957 [1]. Less than sixty years later, the majority of marine litter on the seafloor of five areas in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea were made of plastic (half of all plastic items were bags [2]). Accordingly, on the other side of the Ocean a team of researchers described the first rock type composed partially of plastic material that has strong potential to act as a global marker horizon in the Anthropocene [3]. But do soil microbes agree this proposal [4]?

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References:   [1]  Andrady AL, Neal MA (2009) Applications and societal benefits of plastics. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. 364: 1977–84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0304 

[2] Ioakeimidis C, Zeri C, Kaberi H. et al. (2014) A comparative study of marine litter on the seafloor of coastal areas in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 89: 296–304, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.09.044. 

[3] Corcoran PL, Moore CJ, Jazvac K (2013) An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record. GSA Today 24: 4–8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/GSAT-G198A.1 

Soil is the mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and the myriad of organisms that together support plant life. Soil, interacting over time, is the end product of the influence of the climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), biotic activities (organisms), and parent materials. Are concrete (in photos, concrete balls hosting mangrove) or plastic  parent materials on which soil could develop?

[doi>10.1371/journal.pone.0111913]

Photo: Reef Ball Foundation