The surging tide of microplastics is already an environmental and health threat, but as the world heats up — driving increasingly extreme weather — it’s transforming them into “more mobile, persistent, and hazardous pollutants,” according to a new study, which calls for urgent action.

The connection between plastic and climate change usually focuses on how plastic is partly to blame for the crisis: more than 98% of it is made using fossil fuels, and climate pollution is released during every stage of its life cycle, from manufacture to disposal.

Much less covered, however, is how climate change itself, by fueling more frequent and intense heat waves, fires and floods, increases plastic pollution, spreads it wider and even makes it more dangerous.

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