Effects of anthropogenic discharge and hydraulic deposition on the distribution and accumulation of microplastics in surface sediments of a typical seagoing river: The Haihe River

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.…”

Contribution of Microplastics to Carbon Storage in Coastal Wetland Sediments

“…Therefore, MP are more likely to be deposited on SH compared to TC. Finer sediment grains (slits or clays) have higher adsorption ability for MP, 33 as they have higher surface area than coarser sediment (sands). Therefore, a lower concentration of MP in TC may also relate to the coarser sediment grain size (Table S2).…”

Plastic Plants: The Role of Water Hyacinths in Plastic Transport in Tropical Rivers

“…In the United Kingdom, flood events were found to be responsible for microplastic export (Hurley et al, 2018). Other drivers, such as sediment loads have also been recently examined in Australia (He et al, 2020), China (Liu et al, 2021) and Amazonian rivers (Gerolin et al, 2020) in relation to microplastic transport. Mangrove forests and coastal vegetation habitats can also be an important sink of plastic debris (Ivar do Sul et al, 2014;Cozzolino et al, 2020;Martin et al, 2020).…”