Microplastics and nanoplastics in the environment: Macroscopic transport and effects on creatures

Spatial distribution of microplastics in the fluvial sediments of a transboundary river – A case study of the Tisza River in Central Europe

“…Most of the microplastics found in the sediments of the Tisza and its tributaries were fibres (94-98%). Similarly, fibre-dominated sediments were reported in the Fall and Six Mile Creeks in the USA (Watkins et al, 2019), in the Solimoes, Negro and Amazon Rivers in Brazil (Gerolin et al, 2020), and in the Haine and West Rivers in China (Liu et al, 2021;Huang et al, 2021aHuang et al, , 2021b. On the other hand, in the sediments of the River Thames in the UK (Horton et al, 2017) and the Nakdong River in South Korea (Eo et al, 2019), mostly microplastic fragments were found, and microbeads dominated in the St. Lawrence River in Canada (Crew et al, 2020), while spheres and fragments were both common in the sediments of the Elbe River in Germany (Scherer et al, 2020).…”

“…The comparison of our data to other data from all over the world also suggests that the sediments of the Tisza River system are polluted by microplastics. For example, in the Haihe River in China, 4980 ± 2462 items/kg microplastic particles were deposited (Liu et al, 2021); in the West River in China, 2560-10,240 items/kg were found (Huang et al, 2021a(Huang et al, , 2021b; in the Nakdong River in South Korea, 1970 ± 62 items/kg were counted (Eo et al, 2019); in three rivers of the Amazon system in Brazil, 417-8178 items/kg were found (Gerolin et al, 2020); in the Brisbane River in Australia, 10-520 items/kg were found (He et al, 2020a); in the Canadian St. Lawrence River, 65-7562 items/kg were counted (Crew et al, 2020); and in the Fall and Six Mile Creeks in the USA, ca. 25-250 items/kg were found (Watkins et al, 2019).…”

“…In addition, in a low-velocity environment, the aggradation of the clay fraction is greater, and the clay fraction is proportional to the microplastic content of a sediment sample (Crew et al, 2020;He et al, 2020b;Qian et al, 2021), as microplastics aggregate with natural sediment particles (Christensen et al, 2020). In a low-turbulence environment, the organic content of the sediments increases, and bio-films develop on plastic particles; thus, plastic debris can be deposited more easily under these conditions (Hoellein et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2021;Huang et al, 2021aHuang et al, , 2021b. This result is further supported by the fact that fibres are the most common particles found in the Tisza River, and fibres have a high surface-area-to-volume ratio (Huang et al, 2021a(Huang et al, , 2021b, enhancing their deposition.…”

“…During their route, plastics degrade, and this degradation is driven by sunlight (ultraviolet radiation), pH, temperature, physical weathering caused by friction, oxidative weathering, and biodegradation by microorganisms (Li et al, 2020, Huang et al, 2021a, 2021b. The physical and chemical degradation of large plastic items can be a slow process, lasting from a half century to over a millennium (Chamas et al, 2020); therefore, plastics may persist in the environment for a long time.…”

Research progress on environmental occurrence of microplastics and their interaction mechanism with organic pollutants

“…陆地环境中 的 MPs 主要来自农业塑料薄膜残留、堆肥、污泥的应 用、 废水灌溉和汽车轮胎碎片等, 此外, 自地表径流和 大气沉降也有贡献. 在大气中 MPs 主要来源于合成纤 维(如衣服、 软地毯和窗帘)或涂层材料 [37] 、 合成橡胶轮 胎的侵蚀 [38] 和城市灰尘 [39] [40,41] 资料, 画出了 MPs 在河流、土壤、 海洋、大气等介质中的迁移途径示意图, 如图 1.…”