Abstract
Microplastic is an emerging global pollutant that have attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and the public. Guangdong Province has a large population and a relatively well-developed economy, but lacks a modern pollution control system. Guangdong has a long coastline with varying levels of pollution, and little research has been conducted on microplastics. Therefore, we investigated the level of microplastic pollution in coastal areas of Guangdong Province, and the abundance of microplastics in surface waters and sediments at 13 sampling sites. The abundance of microplastics in surface water and sediment samples ranged from 850 to 3500 items/L and 433.3 to 4166.3 items/kg, respectively. Fiber is the main type of microplastics in both surface water and sediment. The sampled microplastics were typically transparent. Raman results show that the surface water sample mainly includes rayon (38.2%), polyethylene terephthalate (16.4%), and ethylene/vinyl acetate copolymer (12.7%). This study used the pollution load index method to evaluate the pollution risk of microplastics along the coast of Guangdong, and provided the basis for the formulation of environmental policy.
Highlights
Plastics have been produced on a large scale and used widely since the early 1950s.Due to their malleability, low cost, and resistance to water and light, plastics can be molded to create a wide range of products of different sizes and shapes [1]
In order to further clarify the level of microplastic pollution in the coastal areas of Guangdong, it is necessary to compare the results with other studies (Table 1)
The results showed that fibers dominated the surface water and sediments (Figure 3C), accounting for 89.3% and 77.3% of all microplastics, 3.2
Summary
Plastics have been produced on a large scale and used widely since the early 1950s.Due to their malleability, low cost, and resistance to water and light, plastics can be molded to create a wide range of products of different sizes and shapes [1]. Microplastic (MP) is defined as an organic synthetic polymer with a particle size of less than 5 mm [5,6,7,8], and MPs pollution has been considered an important emerging environmental problem in recent years due to its pervasiveness and persistence [9]. Such particles are already highly prevalent in freshwater [2,10,11], terrestrial [2,12,13] or marine environments [14], and atmospheric fallout [15]. A large number of studies have investigated microplastics in bottled water [16], and found that it tends to contain
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