The atmospheric microplastics deposition contributes to microplastic pollution in urban waters

Abstract

Identifying and understanding the potential sources delivering microplastics into the urban water environment is imperative for microplastic pollution control. However, how atmospheric deposition contributes to microplastic pollution in the urban water environment is unclear. Therefore, this study investigated the contribution of atmospheric deposition to microplastic pollution in urban waters based on the analysis of the atmospheric deposition characteristics in the urban area. The results showed that microplastic deposition fluxes during wet weather and dry weather varied from 1.1 × 103±0.06×103 to 3.5 × 103±0.3 × 103 particles/m2/day and 0.91×103±0.09×103 to 1.6 × 103±0.1 × 103 particles/m2/day, respectively. The microplastics deposition flux showed moderate to strong correlations to atmospheric particulate matter concentrations, especially the PM2.5 concentration (R2 = 0.76–0.93), suggesting the regularly monitored PM2.5 concentration might be served as an indicator for microplastics deposition flux estimation. The deposited microplastics were mainly transparent fragments with an average size of 51–67 μm. Polyethylene and polypropylene were the most abundant plastic polymer, followed by polyethylene terephthalate and polyamide. The comparison of microplastics collected during different weather conditions suggested that rain events could increase microplastics deposition fluxes when air quality conditions are similar. Particularly, rains promoted the deposition of fibrous microplastics as well as smaller microplastics. The estimated daily microplastics deposition in the whole city region suggested more microplastics were deposited in summer and winter. The total quantity of microplastics deposited in the urban environment could reach 1.7–12 times of those discharged from treated wastewater. Among them, 10% would directly deposit to urban waters in the studied city region, while the others may also enter the urban waters through runoff. The results of this study highlighted that the atmospheric microplastics deposition is an important source for microplastics, especially smaller ones, to enter the urban waters, which could not be ignored during microplastics pollution control.