Abstract
Microplastic pollution is prevalent in the Ottawa River, with all open water samples ( n = 62) and sediment samples ( n = 10) containing microplastics. The median microplastic concentration of nearshore 100 L water samples was 0.1 fragments per L (ranged between 0.05 and 0.24 fragments per L). The larger volume Manta trawls samples taken in the middle of the Ottawa River had an overall mean concentration of plastics of 1.35 fragments per m3. Plastic concentrations were significantly higher downstream of the wastewater treatment plant (1.99 fragments per m3) compared with upstream of the effluent output (0.71 fragments per m3), suggesting that the effluent plume is a pathway for plastic pollution to the Ottawa River. The mean concentration of microplastic fragments recovered in the sediment samples was 0.22 fragments per g dry weight. The abundance of microplastics in the sediment was not significantly related to the mean particle size or the organic content of the sediment. The most common form of plastic particles found was microfibers. These made up between 70% and 100% of all plastic particles observed, although plastic microbeads and secondary plastic fragments were also recovered.
Highlights
Plastics are ubiquitous in today’s society, and plastic pollution is one of the defining legacies of humans on the earth
The median concentration of plastics in the tap water samples (0.02 fragments per L) is an order of magnitude lower than the median plastic concentration of the field samples (0.1 fragments per L) and there was significantly more plastic in the field samples compared with the tap water controls based on a Kruskal–Wallis test (p < 0.001), these results highlight the potential for the contamination of microplastic samples and the need for laboratory controls to assess the level of contamination
Microplastics were present in every sample, sampling methodology influenced the estimated microplastic concentration of the river, with the smaller volume bottle samples (100 L) taken nearshore being an order of magnitude greater than the open water samples taken with a Manta trawl
Summary
Plastics are ubiquitous in today’s society, and plastic pollution is one of the defining legacies of humans on the earth. In 2015, global plastic production was estimated at 322 million metric tons (Plastics—the Facts 2016), and the vast majority of plastic products are inexpensive and intended to be disposable. This has resulted in massive quantities of plastics being produced and disposed of on an annual basis. Smaller and smaller strands of polymers (Barnes et al 2009) This breakdown, but lack of biological degradation, results in a buildup of small plastic fragments, which has been most extensively studied in marine environments (Cole et al 2011). These small plastic particles can have negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems including concentrating other contaminants in the system (Gregory 1996; Rios et al 2007) and being ingested by animals, including apex predators, reducing their fitness and increasing mortality (Provencher et al 2015; Sigler 2014; Lönnstedt and Eklöv 2016; Holland et al 2016)
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