What can we learn from studying plastic debris in the Sea Scheldt estuary?

Quantification and characterization of macro- and mesoplastic items in the water column of the river Waal

“…Among the large variety of items recorded, the majority of items were fragments of macro-and mesoplastic under the category "Plastic film 2.5 -50 cm (soft)" and "Plastic film plastics 0-2.5 cm (soft plastic)", respectively. This is in line with previously published studies, which also found a large proportion of unidentified plastic pieces of different sizes ranges (Schöneich-Argent et al, 2020;van Emmerik et al, 2020a;Silburn et al, 2022;Velimirovic et al, 2022).…”

“…In Germany, Schöneich-Argent et al (2020) assessed the quantities of plastic transported by three major North Sea tributaries with a stow nets with a mesh size of 12 mm at the cod end: Ems (0.10 × 10 −3 items per m 3 ), Weser (0.13 × 10 −3 items per m 3 ), and Elbe (0.14 × 10 −3 items per m 3 ). Velimirovic et al (2022) determined on average 1.6 × 10 −3 items per m 3 of plastic abundance in the Scheldt River (Appendix D), using a same mesh size stow net. These differences could be partially related to the effect of the efficiency test, since the aforementioned studies did not correct for catching efficiency.…”

“…Using the sampled volume, the concentration of plastic particles per haul was calculated (particles.m −3 ) based on the equations given below. In this study, we have optimized the methodology used by Velimirovic et al (2022), by considering the catching efficiency of the net. The calculation assumes that plastics were evenly distributed over the entire depth gradient.…”

“…To improve the understanding of riverine plastic transport, recent studies have examined plastic abundance in the freshwater environment in different compartments. These included surface water (e.g., Hofmans, 2017;Castro-Jiménez et al, 2019;Sari et al, 2022;, the water column (e.g., Schöneich-Argent et al, 2020;Blondel and Buschman, 2022;Velimirovic et al, 2022), riverbeds (e.g., Wang et al, 2017;Constant et al, 2021), riverbanks (e.g., Blettler et al, 2017;Hidayat et al, 2022), and riverine biota (Collard et al, 2018;Redondo-Hasselerharm et al, 2018;Lestari et al, 2021). Among published studies, surface water is the most commonly investigated compartment by researchers, focused on floating plastics (Blettler et al, 2018).…”

Characterization of a high-sensitivity ICP-TOFMS instrument for microdroplet, nanoparticle, and microplastic analyses

“…Such an approach could be useful in the combined analysis of carbon in microplastic or nanoplastic particles and metal additives used as tracing agents 55 or endogenous metals used in plastics as heat stabilizers, pigments or catalysts. 56…”