Baseline Study on Microplastics in Indian Rivers under Different Anthropogenic Influences

Abstract

Microplastic particles are found in environmental compartments all over the world and receive a great deal of attention, especially in the aquatic environment. Currently, a particularly high input of microplastics via Asian rivers is assumed, but so far, there are hardly any data through field measurements. Three rivers in South India were considered for this purpose to focus on their microplastic load. The emphasis was on the comparison of microplastic concentrations in urban and rural rivers. While two rivers in the megacity Chennai (Tamil Nadu) were found to have an average microplastic concentration of 0.4 microplastic particles/L, a rural river near Munnar (Kerala) had an average concentration of 0.2 microplastic particles/L. Rough estimates of annual microplastic discharge from the Adyar River (Chennai) into the Bay of Bengal are found to be as high as 11.6 trillion microplastic particles. This study should be one of the first baseline studies for microplastic loads in South Indian streams and should be complemented with further environmental sampling before, during and after the monsoon season to get more detailed information on the storage and transportation of fluvial microplastics under different weather conditions.

Real-time monitoring of magnetic nanoparticle-assisted nanoplastic agglomeration and separation from water

“…location or weather/rainfall events. 2,[49][50][51] This makes it nearly impossible to set up a general rule for appropriate removal agent concentrations, aiming for neither leaving removal agent nor NPL behind. Thus, understanding the influence of different particle concentration ratios on the agglomeration behaviour and the subsequent magnetic collection of those is crucial for the design of suitable SPION systems.…”

Microplastics in Water Bodies and in the Environment

“…This Special Issue includes studies from different parts of the world, i.e., Russia [2], India [3], and Mediterranean Regions such as Italy [4], Greece [5], and Cyprus [6]. These are mainly baseline studies that monitor microplastics in different areas.…”

“…There seems to be a trend of correlating the concentration of microplastics with surrounding land uses. Nevertheless, it seems that microplastics are present in all areas even in remote rural ones [2,3], as well as in agricultural lands [5]. However, the presence of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in the vicinity seems to play a crucial role in the concentration of microplastics in a lake [4].…”

“…Different sampling and analytical techniques are employed to determine the microplastics in the different studies. One sampling technique is to directly sample water [2,3] or soil [5] and the other one is to sample organisms that have interacted with microplastics such as zooplankton [6] or zebra mussels [4]. Analyses were performed optically with SEM/EDS, microscopes, stereoscopes, ATR-FTIR, µFTIR, and combinations of them for all of the samples or selected ones.…”

Source Tracking Microplastics Pollution from Qarasu Basin Rivers to Gorgan Bay, Caspian Sea

“…In the study of MP extraction of sediments, the thickness of the collected sediments and their extraction methods were different, however, there was no uniform standard for sediment collection and its thickness varied from 2 to 50 cm(Cannas et al, 2017). The MP content (335µm-5 mm) in Indian rivers was 64.1% ber(Lechthaler et al, 2021).…”