Synthetic shorelines in New Zealand? Quantification and characterisation of microplastic pollution on Canterbury's coastlines

Clunies-Ross, Phil; Smith, Greg; Gordon, Keith C.; Gaw, Sally

doi:10.1080/00288330.2015.1132747

Cited by 70 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Although visual confirmation techniques are inexpensive in terms of time and cost, misidentification of natural particles such as coal ash or coal fly (Eriksen et al ), quartz or calcium carbonate (Ballent et al ), or steric acid and castor oil (Ziajahromi et al ) is possible. Several authors have therefore concluded that the visual identification error rate for identifying natural particles as microplastics is unacceptably high, ranging from 33 to 70% (Hidalgo‐Ruz et al ; Dekiff et al ; Lenz et al ; Lusher et al ; Ballent et al ; Clunies‐Ross et al ; Fischer et al ; Horton et al ; Imhof et al ; Kanhai et al ). Studies not using appropriate analytical confirmation techniques are likely overestimating environmental concentrations of relevant size fractions (Lusher et al ).…”

Section: Sources and Occurrence Of Microplastics In The Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastics in the aquatic environment: Evidence for or against adverse impacts and major knowledge gaps

Burns

Boxall

2018

Enviro Toxic and Chemistry

518

326

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There is increasing scientific and public concern over the presence of microplastics in the natural environment. We present the results of a systematic review of the literature to assess the weight of evidence for microplastics causing environmental harm. We conclude that microplastics do occur in surface water and sediments. Fragments and fibers predominate, with beads making up only a small proportion of the detected microplastic types. Concentrations detected are orders of magnitude lower than those reported to affect endpoints such as biochemistry, feeding, reproduction, growth, tissue inflammation and mortality in organisms. The evidence for microplastics acting as a vector for hydrophobic organic compounds to accumulate in organisms is also weak. The available data therefore suggest that these materials are not causing harm to the environment. There is, however, a mismatch between the particle types, size ranges, and concentrations of microplastics used in laboratory tests and those measured in the environment. Select environmental compartments have also received limited attention. There is an urgent need for studies that address this mismatch by performing high quality and more holistic monitoring studies alongside more environmentally realistic effects studies. Only then will we be able to fully characterize risks of microplastics to the environment to support the introduction of regulatory controls that can make a real positive difference to environmental quality. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:2776–2796. © 2018 SETAC

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Section: Sources and Occurrence Of Microplastics In The Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastics in the aquatic environment: Evidence for or against adverse impacts and major knowledge gaps

Burns

Boxall

2018

Enviro Toxic and Chemistry

518

326

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“…dyes), 28% were identified as plastic polymers (ESM 6) and around half (48%) of the particles were unidentifiable or were natural substances. This proportion of identified versus unidentified particles is common in aquatic microplastic studies using Raman spectroscopy (identified 41-67%) (Ballent et al 2016;Clunies-Ross et al 2016;Frère et al 2017). Because of the low number and size of microplastics found, and the ubiquity of microfibres found in urban atmospheres, contamination during coring and processing (Woodall et al 2015;Wesch et al 2017) must be acknowledged as a possible source of error.…”

Section: Methodsological Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

A temporal sediment record of microplastics in an urban lake, London, UK

et al. 2019

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A radionuclide-dated ( 210 Pb and 137 Cs) sediment core collected from Hampstead Pond No. 1, a North London lake, was used to provide novel data on the historical accumulation of microplastic waste in the urban environment. Microplastics were extracted from sediments by sieving and dense-liquid separation. Fibres of anthropogenic origin dominated the assemblage. Microplastics were first identified by microscopy before Raman spectroscopy of selected particles was used to determine the composition of synthetic polymers and dyes. Polystyrene microplastic particles were identified, in addition to synthetic fibres of polyacrylonitrile, polyvinyl chloride and fibres containing synthetic dyes. Concentrations of total microplastics in the sediment samples ranged from detection level to 539 particles per kilogram of dried sediment. Proliferation of microplastics is evident in the core from the late 1950s to the present. Relatively low numbers of particles were found in older sediments, comparable to laboratory blanks, highlighting the difficulty of extending a plastic chronostratigraphy back to the early twentieth century. This study shows that, with optimisation, routine extraction of microplastics from radionuclide-dated lake sediments can add an important temporal perspective to our understanding of microplastics in aquatic systems.

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“…The comparison of identification success rates between studies remained complicated as the number of analyzed MP and the identification methods were different. The rate of successful identification may be for example 57.5 % in a New Zealand study (Clunies-Ross et al 2016) or 4.5 % in a European study (Lots et al 2017).…”

Section: Particles Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occurrence and identification of microplastics in beach sediments from the Hauts-de-France region

Doyen

Hermabessière²,

Dehaut³

et al. 2019

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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The present work was carried out to quantify microplastics (MP) from three sandy beaches along the Côte d'Opale coastline located in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France. Three different study sites located along the English Channel were investigated due to different levels of anthropopression and hydrodynamic conditions. Sediments were collected at three different tide lines: high tide line (HTL), middle of the intertidal zone (IZ), and low tide line (LTL) to investigate the effects of tide line on microplastic contamination. Particles and fibers were counted and colors were recorded; polymer identification was then performed using pyrolysisgas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). Particles and fibers abundance ranged from 23.4 ± 18.9 to 69.3 ± 30.6 items kg-1 dry weight sediment, with a trend towards fiber predominance, were observed. No difference in particles and fibers abundance was found between the different beaches and tide lines, except for Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the particle number was significantly different between tide lines. Major polymers identified were polyethylene (36.6 %) and polypropylene (10.7 %). This citizen science project provided preliminary data about the abundance and polymeric nature of MP along the Côte d'Opale coastline.

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Synthetic shorelines in New Zealand? Quantification and characterisation of microplastic pollution on Canterbury's coastlines

Cited by 70 publications

References 25 publications

Microplastics in the aquatic environment: Evidence for or against adverse impacts and major knowledge gaps

Microplastics in the aquatic environment: Evidence for or against adverse impacts and major knowledge gaps

A temporal sediment record of microplastics in an urban lake, London, UK

Occurrence and identification of microplastics in beach sediments from the Hauts-de-France region

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