Colorado Drone Flights Detected Microplastics at 100 Meters Above Ground, Study Finds

Nanoplastics and microplastics are usually measured at ground level or in water. A new Colorado study took the sampler into the air: researchers flew an uncrewed aerial system (UAS) at 80 to 100 meters above the ground and spectroscopically confirmed airborne microplastics at 100 meters.

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The study, “Measuring atmospheric microplastic composition and occurrence from an uncrewed aerial system,” was published open access in Scientific Reports on October 6, 2026. The authors are Radiance Calmer, Alessandra D’Angelo, Michael Rhodes, Dale Lawrence and Gijs de Boer, working through the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), related CU Boulder units, the University of Rhode Island and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

What the team flew and found

• Where. Proof-of-concept flights in Colorado, USA, during fall 2024, at two sites with high anthropogenic activity: Erie and Arvada.
• How high. Sampling at 80–100 m above ground level, using an environmental cyclone sampler on a UAS to collect particles larger than 1 micrometer.
• How they identified plastic. Particles were counted by optical microscopy and identified by Raman microscopy with automated spectral matching (OpenSpecy).
• Confirmed airborne plastic. Spectroscopically confirmed microplastics were detected at 100 m a.g.l. and represented a mean of 13.8 ± 1.8% of the blank-corrected, morphologically selected airborne-particle counts in the 3–10 µm size range.
• What they looked like. Hetero-aggregates dominated the samples, a pattern the authors say is consistent with traffic-related material.

Flight-by-flight detail

Supplementary counts for the four field samples (after blank correction) show confirmed microplastic fractions of 12.5% and 15.0% on two Erie flights (Sept. 19 and Oct. 3, 2024). Two Arvada flights (Sept. 20 and Oct. 2, 2024) returned morphologically selected particles but 0% spectroscopically confirmed microplastics in that subset—underscoring why the authors frame this as a methods proof of concept, not a statewide concentration map.

Why altitude sampling matters

Airborne microplastics can travel long distances, yet direct measurements within and above the atmospheric boundary layer remain scarce. The authors say the UAS method is adaptable for ocean-surface, high-altitude and remote monitoring. That sits alongside ground-based stream work, including a Pennsylvania study WaterVO™ covered on October 12 that linked stream microplastic spikes to wind gusts and cold weather.

Nanoplastics: the smaller fraction

This study focused on particles larger than 1 micrometer, with the confirmed-plastic share reported for the 3–10 µm window. Nanoplastics, smaller than 1 micrometer, sit below that range, so they were not part of these confirmed counts. The same atmospheric pathways that loft microplastic fibers and fragments can also move the smaller nanoplastic fraction, which is why we follow microplastics and nanoplastics together.

Sources

• Calmer, R., D’Angelo, A., Rhodes, M., Lawrence, D. & de Boer, G., “Measuring atmospheric microplastic composition and occurrence from an uncrewed aerial system,” Scientific Reports, published October 6, 2026 (open access): doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-74287-9

Photo: Colorado Front Range viewed from Colorado Highway 119, by U52983 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Regional view of the Front Range; not a flight-path photo from the study.

Keep learning

More from WaterVO News: Wind and cold tracked microplastics in a Pennsylvania stream · Lake Erie plants cut micro- and nanoplastics, but treated water still averaged about 2 million particles per liter

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