Distribution, abundance and risks of microplastics in the environment

Qin, Yu; Hu, Xiaojie; Yang, Bing; Zhang, Guichi; Wang, Jian; Ling, Wanting

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.126059

Cited by 167 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 137 publications

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“…The risks of MPs based on the abundance, they are relatively low investigations have been carried out in the aquatic systems. Because MPs can act as niches for organisms (Aragaw and Mekonnen 2021a ), the physicochemical, and morphological features of their complex niches should be critically studied in the future to investigate the ecotoxicological impacts as compared with the simple MPs only (Yu et al 2020 ). Other than the MPs, nanofibers, and fabrics as a nano-plastic material has not been researched out and monitored.…”

Section: Effects and Potential Risks Of Microplastics In Water Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastic pollution in African countries’ water systems: a review on findings, applied methods, characteristics, impacts, and managements

Aragaw

2021

SN Appl. Sci.

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Owed to their simplicity, flexibility, lightweight, and low cost, plastics have become highly demanded in Africa as well as worldwide. However, the management of plastic wastes, particularly in African countries, is inadequate and most of the plastic debris is gatewayed into the water bodies. Nowadays, environmentalists, organizations, and governments are aware of microplastic pollution in the marine and terrestrial environment. Thus, addressing a compressive literature review in one referenced paper, as they draw up the articles, is essential to propose new research directions, to synthesize the existing theories among the existing studies. The abundance of microplastics is variable depending on the sampling and identification techniques. In this review, the available publications on microplastic pollution in African countries’ water systems were retrieved. Investigations found that microplastic pollution levels in the studied water bodies were reported in high concentrations. It was observed that different sampling and analytical methods were applied for the detection of microplastics, and suggestions were raised at it may affect the reliability of the results. Most of the detected and quantified microplastics were confirmed as they are from secondary sources. Most of the microplastic pollution research was conducted dominantly in South Africa, and secondly Nigeria, although other countries should also start conducting in their water systems. Surface water and sediment samples were dominantly carried out, but are limited with biota samples; hence, the risk assessment of microplastics is not yet determined. Some of the African countries have regulations on the prevention of macroplastic wastes, but the implementations are unsuccessful and most have not yet been established resulting in a threat of microplastics pollution. Thus, the research priorities on microplastic detection should be identified, and the African countries’ governments should be more proactive in eradicating macroplastic, which ends up as microplastics, pollutions in the water environments. Graphic abstract Article Highlights Researches on microplastic pollution in African countries water system is limited . A high microplastics abundance is found in African countries water system. Sampling methods and used analytical techniques for microplastic detection were included. Harmonized standard methods for microplastic pollution research should be established. Combined analytical tools at once should be adopted to detect reliable microplastics.

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Section: Effects and Potential Risks Of Microplastics In Water Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastic pollution in African countries’ water systems: a review on findings, applied methods, characteristics, impacts, and managements

Aragaw

2021

SN Appl. Sci.

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“…Smaller plastics can readily be swallowed by aquatic sh and invertebrates, causing stress, disruption of feeding, damage, metabolic function changes, and tumor growth, according to studies. (Rosenkranz et al, 2009;Imhof et al, 2013;Sanchez et al, 2014;Rochman, 2016;Koongolla et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2020b;Yu et al, 2020). Furthermore, most plastics are chemically toxic and serve as a pollutant sink (Teuten et al, 2009;Rochman et al, 2013a;Vandermeersch et al, 2017;Du et al, 2020;Robin et al, 2020;Walkinshaw et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite extensive research efforts investigating plastic contamination (microplastic only, very few of them reported mega-, macro-, meso-, micro-and nano plastics and all size ranges with its pattern, distribution, source, color, shape & size) round the world in marine water, surface or beach sediment and in terrestrial organisms (Eriksen et al, 2013;Imhof et al, 2013;Ivar do Sul and Costa, 2014;Noik and Tuah, 2015;Pereao et al, 2020), few studies have been focused on freshwater aquatic ecosystems (Morritt et al, 2014;Wagner et al, 2014;Klein et al 2015;. There is already proved that several microplastic particles and bers can accumulate not only marine water but also freshwaters; though fewer microplastic monitoring concentrations have been done on freshwater systems than in seawaters (Klein et al, 2018;Fu and Wang, 2019;Yu et al, 2020). Thus, the knowledge about the plastic waste in river water and sediment in the world are scare, and there is still very little information on their presence, sources and destiny (Thompson et al, 2009;Eerkes-Medrano et al, 2015) along with the social campaign for proper plastic management in freshwater and marine water is very rare.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plastic pollution in the aquatic ecosystem: an emerging threat need to be tackled

Reale²,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The accumulation of plastic substances in the aquatic ecosystem is a threat that should not be underestimated. Smaller plastic pieces, such as microplastics and nanoplastics, are of particular concern since their presence in the food web is persistent. Microplastics enter in the food chain and its very bottom, when aquatic organisms eat or ingest contaminated food materials, and keep being transferred in the next food web such as predators including humans. It is evident that aquatic organisms frequently ingest microplastics across a variety of feeding guilds. Marine organisms may cause shock, inner or outer injuries, ulcerating sores, blocking digestive tracts, fake feelings, degraded feeding capabilities, fatigue, weakness, limited predator prevention, or death due to the ingestion of large plastic material and/or particles. However, effects of microplastic particles on marine organisms and the toxicity mechanisms are largely unknown. There is much more limited evidence of the impacts of microplastics intake on freshwater species, both in the limited number of studies performed and the number of species examined. However, a few recent freshwater investigations imply that the physical impacts are similar to those observed in the sea. As a result, we conducted a brief evaluation of the state of the science in order to identify knowledge gaps and research requirements to examine the impacts of microplastics on aquatic ecosystem. To yet, just a few researches have looked at the biological consequences of plastics on aquatic organisms, and the important transport pathways of plastics from freshwater to marine environments and vice-versa.

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“…While the accumulation of large plastics is visible, a great deal of effort has been directed toward raising public awareness of the environmental threat associated with microplastics (i.e., man-made polymers <5 mm in their largest dimension). When research began, the focus was largely directed toward the marine environment however, all environments are now under investigation and microplastics have been detected literally everywhere, including food and drinks, freshwater, urban and terrestrial environments (Enyoh et al 2019;Li et al 2019;Mai et al 2018;Yu et al 2020). Within this context, Polar Regions havefor a long timebeen considered as pristine environments and therefore, at lower risk, if not completely immune to the threat of anthropogenic pollution and microplastics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastics in Polar Samples

Tirelli

Suaria

Lusher

2020

Handbook of Microplastics in the Environment

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Microplastics are increasingly recognized as being globally widespread, but relatively little is known about the presence and abundance of microplastics in samples collected in Polar Regions. Here we review the current knowledge about microplastic occurrence and distribution in polar environments, with a particular focus on the relevance of the data and comparability between Arctic and Antarctic investigations. In the Arctic, microplastics have been found in seawater, marine sediments, ice, and snow and in the gut content of several species at different

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Distribution, abundance and risks of microplastics in the environment

Cited by 167 publications

References 137 publications

Microplastic pollution in African countries’ water systems: a review on findings, applied methods, characteristics, impacts, and managements

Microplastic pollution in African countries’ water systems: a review on findings, applied methods, characteristics, impacts, and managements

Plastic pollution in the aquatic ecosystem: an emerging threat need to be tackled

Microplastics in Polar Samples

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