Abstract
Plastic pollution is a global environmental and human health issue, with plastics now ubiquitous in the environment and biota. Despite extensive international research, key knowledge gaps ("known unknowns") remain around ecosystem-scale and human health impacts of plastics in the environment, particularly in limnetic, coastal and marine systems. Here we review aquatic plastics research in three contrasting geographic and cultural settings, selected to present a gradient of heavily urbanised (and high population density) to less urbanised (and low population density) areas: China, the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia. Research from each country has varying environmental focus (for example, biota-focussed studies in Australia target various bird, fish, turtle and seal species, while UK and China-based studies focus on commercially important organisms such as bivalves, fish and decapods), and uses varying methods and reporting units (e.g. mean, median or range). This has resulted in aquatic plastics datasets that are hard to compare directly, supporting the need to converge on standardised sampling methods, and bioindicator species. While all the study nations show plastics contamination, often at high levels, datasets are variable and do not clearly demonstrate pollution gradients.
Highlights
Plastic pollution is a globally recognised environmental, ecosystem, and human health issue,[1,2,3] with plastics ubiquitous in the environment and biological systems.[4,5,6] Despite large-scale international concern and research attention, recognised knowledge gaps remain around ecosystem-scale and human health impacts of plastics, and the uxes and masses of plastic present in global systems
Plastic began to appear in the environment, it was recognised as a problem, it was studied, and policies have been developed
To effectively manage the problem, we need to converge on standardised methods and bioindicator species, as well as build a more developed understanding of the physical processes driving the distribution patterns we see in different habitats to make global comparisons more reliable
Summary
Plastic pollution is a globally recognised environmental, ecosystem, and human health issue,[1,2,3] with plastics ubiquitous in the environment and biological systems.[4,5,6] Despite large-scale international concern and research attention (summarised in Wang7), recognised knowledge gaps (which we term here “known unknowns”) remain around ecosystem-scale and human health impacts of plastics, and the uxes and masses of plastic present in global systems. China and the UK have published the most research on commercially important marine species such as Nephrophs norvegicus in the UK26 and bivalves in China.[24] China has ten investigations on bivalves (mussels and oysters), the UK has nine and Australia one.[35] Metrics included items/individual and/or items/mass of organisms. The range for items/ individual was 0.4–57.2, and the concentration for bivalve esh was 0.086–10.5 items per g of tissue with the higher values reported from China.[36,37] Scientists from the UK have investigated decapods, targeting the langoustine Nephrops norvegicus (lobster).[26,38] While decapods have been investigated by Chinese researchers, this is o en in association with another subject and is not the main topic.[39] The only country to examine plastic in Holothuroidea (sea cucumbers) has been China, re ecting its commercial interest in this farmed product.[40,41]. The studies available do not identify any consistent gradient in plastics contamination when comparing the maximum concentrations recorded in each country (Table 2)
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