New analytical method for the determination of styrene oligomers formed from polystyrene decomposition and its application at the coastlines of the North-West Pacific Ocean

Marine Anthropogenic Litter

“…Manufactured NPs come with additives, monomers or oligomers of the component molecules of the plastics, or come with dispersants that are either deliberately added or that are just by-products of the manufacture process. Polystyrene, for instance, release styrene monomers (Saido et al 2014), which may add to the overall toxicity. If desired, such hydrophobic chemicals may be extracted from NP dispersions prior to testing, for instance using sequential Empore disk extractions .…”

Global styrene oligomers monitoring as new chemical contamination from polystyrene plastic marine pollution

“…Polystyrene (PS) is of major concern, and is found abundantly at sea, has hazardous chemicals, and also is one of the 6 major polymers most produced and consumed, contributing to environmental pollution [1,5,30,31]. Since the early 1970s [17], PS plastic pellets have been reported on the surface of the western North Atlantic Ocean [32].…”

“…However, other than counting the quantity of plastic debris [33][34][35][36], there is no reliable and objective method to monitor the extent of such pollution [30,34]. Plastic debris counting techniques can be easily influenced by differences in the sampling and detection methods, such as sea conditions (wave, wind, sunlight, and so on) and observer experience [3,35,36], causing biases [31,35,36]. For example, in contrast to the results of previous studies [3,6,8,19,21], the quantities of plastic debris in the North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea during a 22-year period [32] and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean during an 11-year period [37] were reported to show no strong, spatial and temporal trends.…”

“…For example, in contrast to the results of previous studies [3,6,8,19,21], the quantities of plastic debris in the North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea during a 22-year period [32] and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean during an 11-year period [37] were reported to show no strong, spatial and temporal trends. Even though general counting techniques exist for assessing contamination by other stable plastics [34], any new such method would be a useful alternative for assessing PS pollution in large-scale monitoring studies [29][30][31]33]. Thus, the monitoring using an alternative indicator is important to identify the pollution routes of PS in natural environment.…”

“…This concept is original and may provide a new strategy for quantitatively assessing marine pollution arising from the disposal of synthetic polymers. As with POPs, styrene oligomers (SOs) derived from PS are potentially toxic to wildlife because they may constitute endocrine disrupting chemicals [38][39][40][41] or PS plastic pollution indicators [30,31]. However, SOs are conspicuously lacking in largescale distribution maps of plastic contamination.…”