Читать книгу Plastic and Microplastic in the Environment - Группа авторов - Страница 12

Plastic products have benefited human life for one hundred years. Plastics are used in almost every sector including construction, packaging textiles, consumer products, transportation, electronics, industry, and medical applications. These products make our life more comfortable, convenient, and safe. The world plastics production in 2018 was about 360 million tonnes (PlasticsEurope 2018). However, due to poor management, about 10% of plastic wastes are discharged into aquatic environments (Cole et al. 2011). Recently, considerable attention is placed on the distribution of micro‐sized plastic particles, so‐called microplastics (MPs). The ubiquity of MPs has been widely documented in the marine environment, and their possible impact was investigated (Dris et al. 2018). MPs are frequently ingested by organisms, either from ingestion of other organisms containing MPs, or because they cannot distinguish MPs from prey (de Sá et al. 2015). This may cause physical harm for organisms including a disruption of the hormone balance or digestive system, reduced feeding, and impacting reproduction (Carr et al. 2012; Lusher et al. 2013). Another ecological risk relates to the interaction between MPs and toxic chemicals. The small plastic debris has a high surface area to volume ratio that can enhance the interaction of toxic chemicals onto their surface (de Sá et al. 2018). These chemicals may be carried by MPs over long distances and accumulate in organisms after being ingested (Bakir et al. 2016; Lee et al. 2014). Another potential risk is that MPs can be vectors of microorganisms that attach to their surfaces (Viršek et al. 2017). Human pathogens have been found to colonize on MP particles in marine environments (Foulon et al. 2016; Kirstein et al. 2016). However, the existence of MPs in aquatic environments is complex as they have different polymer types, morphologies, sizes, states of degradation, and contain different additives. Therefore, the evaluation of MPs toxicity is still hampered. Until now, most studies on MPs have been conducted on marine environments; while in contrast, the distribution of MPs in freshwater environments has been investigated less. To highlight this, a study by Blettler et al. (2018) found that 87% of MP studies were related to marine environments, while only 13% of the studies were on freshwater environments. A few studies reported that rivers can transport a huge amount of plastic and MPs into oceans; according to Schmidt et al. (2017), rivers contribute 88–95% of plastic wastes placed into the oceans. Methods for the identification of MPs have been developed by many researchers; however, these methods are not homogeneous and standardized, and this hampers the comparison between different studies (Li et al. 2018; Van Cauwenberghe et al. 2015).

This chapter reviews the current state of MPs in freshwater systems, and different techniques for sample collection, preparation, and analysis of MPs are summarized. Moreover, the potential sources, pathways, and occurrences of MPs into freshwater systems are discussed in the chapter.