Assessment of potential ecological risk of microplastics in the coastal sediments of India: A meta-analysis

M Ranjani,S Veerasingam,R Venkatachalapathy,M Mugilarasan,Andrei Bagaev,Vladimir Mukhanov,P Vethamony

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.111969

Abstract

Abundance, chemical composition and ecological risk of microplastics (MPs) in terrestrial and marine environments have merited substantial attention from the research communities. This is the first attempt to comprehend the ecological risk of MPs in sediments along the Indian coast using meta-data. Polymer hazard index (PHI), pollution load index (PLI) and potential ecological risk index (PERI) were used to evaluate the quality of sediments. Areas have high PHI values (>1000) due to the presence of polymers with high hazard scores such as polyamide (PA) and polystyrene (PS). According to PLI values, sediments along the west coast of India (WCI) are moderately contaminated with MPs (PLI: 3.03 to 15.5), whereas sediments along the east coast of India (ECI) are less contaminated (PLI: 1 to 6.14). The PERI values of sediments along the Indian coast showed higher ecological risk for the metropolitan cities, river mouths, potential fishing zones and the remote islands.

Highlights

Accumulation of plastic debris in the terrestrial and marine ecosystem from the poles to the deep ocean to the coast is found ubiq uitously (Obbard et al, 2014; Veerasingam et al, 2020a; Cunningham et al, 2020)
Lebreton et al (2017) showed that the River Ganges is the second largest contributor (115,000 tons) of plastic to the ocean. Though these model estimates were not validated due to inadequate monitoring data, the available field measurements and modelling studies do revealed that most of the terrestrial and marine sediments in India are contaminated with MPs
According to pollution load index (PLI) values, terrestrial and marine sediments along the west coast of India (WCI) are moderately contaminated with MPs, while the sediments along the east coast of India (ECI) are less contaminated

Summary

Introduction

Accumulation of plastic debris in the terrestrial and marine ecosystem from the poles to the deep ocean to the coast is found ubiq uitously (Obbard et al, 2014; Veerasingam et al, 2020a; Cunningham et al, 2020). Borrelle et al (2020) evaluated influence of three comprehensive management strategies - plastic waste reduction, waste management, and environmental recovery - at diverse levels of effort to assess plastic emissions in 2030 for 173 countries. About 19 to 23 million metric tons of plastic waste, generated globally, entered into the aquatic ecosystems. Borrelle et al (2020) found that the predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution around the world. Even with immediate and concerted action, 710 million tons of plastic waste cumulatively entered the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Many countries around the world are struggling to manage the current volume of plastic waste and plastic contamination in the environment (UNEA, 2019; Lau et al, 2020)

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