Presence of nanoplastics in rural and remote surface waters

Abstract

It is now established that microplastics are a pervasive presence in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The same is assumed to be true for nanoplastics but data are lacking due to technical difficulties associated with sample analysis. Here, we measured nanoplastics in waterbodies at two contrasting sites: remote Siberian Arctic tundra and a forest landscape in southern Sweden. Nanoplastics were detected in all sampled Swedish lakes (n = 7) and streams (n = 4) (mean concentration = 563 µg l− 1) and four polymer types were identified. In Siberia nanoplastics were detected in 7/12 sampled lakes, ponds and surface flooding, but only two polymer types were detected and concentrations were lower (mean 51 µg l− 1). Based on back-calculation of air mass trajectories, we infer that nanoplastics arrive at both sites by aerial deposition from local and regional sources. Our results suggest that nanoplastics may be a near-ubiquitous presence even in remote ecosystems.

Nanoplastics measurements in Northern and Southern Polar Ice

“…Nanoplastics seem to compose a significant proportion of the plastics debris budget. Several methodological approaches, both quantitative and semi-quantitative, indicated the presence of nanoplastics in environmental samples of seawater (North Atlantic, Dutch Warden Sea), rivers (the UK), regional and remote surface waters (Sweden and Siberia, Russia) and snow in the remote high-altitude Alps (Austria) (Davranche et al, 2020;Materić et al, 2020Materić et al, , 2021aMaterić et al, , 2021cSullivan et al, 2020;Wahl et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2020). These first measurements of environmental nanoplastics already suggest the omnipresence of nanoplastics.…”