Microplastics along the beaches of southeast coast of India

Karthik, R.; Robin, R.S.; Ramachandran, Ramesh; Ganguly, Dipnarayan; Anandavelu, I.; Raghuraman, R.; Hariharan, G.; Ramakrishna, A.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.07.242

Cited by 327 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…These studies agree on the prevalence of PE MPs, followed by PP and other categories, with a 3:1 ratio between the first two in the Mediterranean area [56,61]. Recent works by Young and Elliott [100] in the Hawaii islands, or Karthik et al [121] in the coasts of India, found a ratio between one-ninth and a one-third between PE and PP in the beach FR. Our finds agree with the Mediterranean results.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Merlino

Locritani

Bernardi

et al. 2020

Water

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Data on the abundance and distribution of Anthropogenic Marine Debris (AMD) on the coastal areas of the northern Tyrrhenian coast are still scarce. The objective of this study is to characterize, in terms of size, color, morphology and polymeric nature, the Large Microplastics (LMPs), i.e., plastic objects within 1 and 5 mm, sampled on three beaches located within the coastal macro-area of the Pelagos Sanctuary, an international protected zone in the north-western Mediterranean. The beaches have similar morphological characteristics but different degrees of urbanization. LMPs were sampled seasonally for one year. The polymeric nature of a representative subsample of the collected LMPs was investigated using a portable Raman instrument, to assess the feasibility of in situ characterization. In this study, 26,486 items were sorted by typology (Expanded Polystyrene-EPS, fragments, and resin pellets), size, and for fragments and resin pellets, also by color and chemical nature. Statistical data on the quantity, density, type, spatial distribution, and seasonality of the sampled LMPs are presented. Differences in LMP abundance and composition were detected among sites. A seasonality trend emerges from our statistical analysis, depending on both LMP typology and urbanization degrees of the beaches. Our data do not show the existence of a relationship between the size of the investigated MPs and their color, while they suggest that the type of polymer influences the degree of fragmentation. This underlines the need to further investigate the mechanisms leading to the production and dispersion of MPs in coastal areas, taking into account both the urbanization of the beach, and therefore the possible sources of input, and the different types of MPs. Finally, a Raman portable instrument proved to be a valuable aid in performing in situ polymeric characterization of LMPs.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Merlino

Locritani

Bernardi

et al. 2020

Water

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“…The impact of microplastics (MPs) on global ecosystems is widely accepted and discussed in many comprehensive reviews (e.g., Lambert et al, 2014;Bläsing and Amelung, 2018;Ng et al, 2018;Schell et al, 2020). The contamination of the environment with plastic waste started to raise our awareness of this extraordinary stable material step by step when seabirds were found, in the early 1960s, perished with their guts full of plastic debris (Thompson et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global concentrations of microplastics in soils – a review

Büks

Kaupenjohann

2020

SOIL

232

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Abstract. Worldwide, microplastics (MPs) have been commonly recognized as a threat to soil ecosystems. Terrestrial soils are widely contaminated by MPs due to the application of sewage sludge and wastewater, plastic mulching, littering, the input of tire wear from roads and atmospheric deposition. Within the last decade, an increasing number of individual studies focused on item counts and masses of MPs in different global soil environments. We reviewed these studies to achieve a representative picture of common degrees of contamination. The majority of the prospected agricultural and horticultural sites were exposed to sewage sludge and mulching film application and showed concentrations of <13 000 items kg−1 dry soil and 4.5 mg kg−1 dry soil. Microplastic concentrations in soils in the vicinity of municipal areas were thereby 10 times larger compared to rural sites. The measurement of masses was generally underrepresented compared to item numbers, and mass data were often generated from microscopic analyses by using shape-to-mass models instead of direct measurements. Extreme values, such as on industrial sites, exceed the common concentrations by 2 to 4 orders of magnitude, which might be attributed not only to the land use but also to the applied methods of measurement. Campaigns that focus on other entry pathways like composts, road dust runoff and littering or land uses like grassland, forest, fallow and wilderness as well as industrial sites and landfills were underrepresented or nonexistent. Background loads, such as atmospheric deposition, were often not excluded from the measurements and, thus, the studies might overestimate the contribution of the analyzed entry pathway to the total load. Other studies focused on light density MP, e.g., from mulching films, and therefore underestimated the amount of soil MP. Despite these limitations, the data give an impression of the spectrum of global MP concentrations and are a good basis for experiments examining the effects of MPs on exposed soils. Based on the collected data, we identified problems of past studies and recommend that future experimentation take into account standardized methods of extraction and quantification, a proper characterization of the sampling sites and their history as well as the exploration of as yet underrepresented entry pathways and land uses.

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“…Environmental pollutions caused by plastics wastes is one of global problems that needs serious concerns. The plastics wastes found in ground water and even inside the digestive system of sea animals in recent days, in the form of either macro-or micro-plastics (Frias & Nash, 2019), is a problem not only in Indonesia but also around the globe (Botterell et al, 2019;Cho et al, 2019;Guzzetti et al, 2018;Karthik et al, 2018;Li et al, 2019;Rainieri & Barranco, 2018;Slootmaekers et al, 2019;Teng et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2019;Windsor et al, 2019). Apart from development of recycling technologies for non-biodegradable plastics (Horodytska et al, 2018;Mwanza et al, 2018;Ragaert et al, 2017;Silveira et al, 2018;Thakur et al, 2018), development of biodegradable plastics (Chinaglia et al, 2018) is one of important solutions in coping with plastics wastes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodegradable plastics from linier low-density polyethylene and polysaccharide: The influence of polysaccharide and acetic acid

Nurhajati¹,

Pidhatika²,

Harjanto³

2019

MKKP

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Global problems associated with conventional, non-biodegradable plastics have urged the society to use more ecofriendly biodegradable plastics. In this study, linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) was co-compounded with cassava-based thermoplastic starch (TPS) to prepare biodegradable plastics (i.e. plastics that can be degraded by microbes), in which three different LLDPE/TPS ratios were studied. Acetic acid was used to hydrolyze the polysaccharides by breaking the branched amylopectin that causes the TPS-containing composites brittle and stiff. The biodegradation properties of the LLDPE/TPS composites were determined by observing the level of microbial growth on the sample surface after incubation with potato dextrose agar medium that was inoculated with Penicillium sp. and Aspergillus niger. Burial test in a humid composting medium was also performed to validate the biodegradation properties. The mass change (%) was calculated in relative to the initial mass before burial test. The physical properties (tensile strength and elongation at break) of the bioplastics were determined using universal testing machine before and after burial treatment. The morphology of the sample surface was evaluated using scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that the microbial growth increases with increasing TPS content. Negative mass changes were observed on all samples that contain TPS, with increase in the magnitude with increasing TPS content. The tensile strength tends to increase in the first 28 days of burial period in a composting medium then decreases and plateaus, while the elongation at break decreases with increasing burial period. Moreover, samples that contain acetic acid showed less microbial attachment and less biodegradation compared to samples that does not contain acetic acid.

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Microplastics along the beaches of southeast coast of India

Cited by 327 publications

References 65 publications

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Global concentrations of microplastics in soils – a review

Biodegradable plastics from linier low-density polyethylene and polysaccharide: The influence of polysaccharide and acetic acid

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