Abstract
Rivers act as temporary sinks of microplastics and a key medium allowing microplastics to enter the ocean. In this study, microplastics pollution in river shore sediment of the Indian Himalaya, including the Brahmaputra River and the Indus River was discussed. Sampling campaigns were performed in years 2018 and 2019. Sample pretreatment was performed using Na2WO4·2H2O for density separation and H2O2 for oxidation of organic material. Microplastics analysis was performed by using FTIR microscope. The smaller size of microplastics 20–150 μm were more abundant (531–3485 MP/kg in the Brahmaputra River and 525–1752 MP/kg in the Indus River) than microplastics in size range between 150 μm and 5 mm (20–240 MP/kg in the Brahmaputra River and 60–340 MP/kg in the Indus River). Microplastics were found in sediments of all sampling sites. Fragmented, secondary microplastics were dominant in the river shore sediment of the Indian Himalaya. This study contributes towards filling research gap of microplastics in India's freshwater source and highlights the importance of in-depth complete studies of microplastics in the rivers that act as pathways and sinks for microplastics.
Highlights
The global production of plastics has reached 368 million tonnes in 2019 (PlasticEurope, 2020), and it is on steep acceleration with an
This paper aims to study microplastics pollution in the river shore sediments of the Indian Himalaya, including the Brahmaputra River and the Indus River
This study aims to contribute in filling the research gaps on the abundance of microplastics in freshwater sources in Indian Himalaya
Summary
The global production of plastics has reached 368 million tonnes in 2019 (PlasticEurope, 2020), and it is on steep acceleration with an The predominant microplastics sources in freshwaters is the fragmentation of larger plastic debris disposed on land that flows into freshwater sources (Blettler et al, 2018; Eerkes-medrano et al, 2015). Number of studies on microplastics pollution in rivers worldwide are growing but still are limited and should receive more scientific attention (Blettler et al, 2018; Koelmans et al, 2019). The global model of riverine input of plastics to the ocean estimates that 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste enters into the ocean yearly via rivers, and the top 20 populating rivers were mostly located in Asia (Lebreton et al, 2017). There remains a massive lack of field-based studies of microplastics in the rivers of Asian countries (Mai et al, 2019)
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