Up until now, scientists had considered the ocean to be a kind of microplastic sink.

Globally, the researchers calculate that 136,000 tons of microplastic could be blowing onshore each year. Even worse, they were measuring at the edge of relatively clean Atlantic waters-highly polluted seas like the Mediterranean are probably flinging far more particles onshore. The picture ain’t pretty: They found that up to 19 microplastic fragments float in a cubic meter of air.

And now, writing today in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from Europe and South Africa demonstrate in the lab how popping bubbles can fling microplastics into the air the same team also gathered microplastics from the air flowing over a French beach.

Microplastics are the ground-up remnants of plastic bottles and bags, or the synthetic fibers shed from your polyester clothing-technically anything smaller than 5 millimeters long-and of late scientists have been finding them everywhere, from the deep sea to the tallest mountains. And as much as I hate to rain on your beach day, you can now add an omnipresent pollutant to that list of debris: microplastics. Those are all punted into the air when whales breach or waves crash or even when bubbles rise to the surface of the sea, ejecting material that gets caught up in sea breezes and fog banks.

Breathe sea breeze