The Danube so colourful: A potpourri of plastic litter outnumbers fish larvae in Europe's second largest river

By A. Lechner, H. Keckeis, Franz Lumesberger-Loisl, B. Zens, Reinhard Krusch, M. Tritthart, M. Glas, E. Schludermann. Environmental Pollution, 2014

820 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous studies on plastic pollution of aquatic ecosystems focused on the world's oceans. Large rivers as major pathways for land-based plastic litter, has received less attention so far. Here we report on plastic quantities in the Austrian Danube. A two year survey (2010, 2012) using stationary driftnets detected mean plastic abundance (n = 17,349; mean ± S.D: 316.8 ± 4664.6 items per 1000 m−3) and mass (4.8 ± 24.2 g per 1000 m−3) in the river to be higher than those of drifting larval fish (n = 24,049; 275.3 ± 745.0 individuals. 1000 m−3 and 3.2 ± 8.6 g 1000 m−3). Industrial raw material (pellets, flakes and spherules) accounted for substantial parts (79.4%) of the plastic debris. The plastic input via the Danube into the Black Sea was estimated to 4.2 t per day.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/358bf7549327c9b5a6cbb1bc69bd7b7df9798db2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. K. Duis
2. A. Coors
3. Jun Wang
4. S. Anbumani
5. P. Kakkar
6. Matthias C. Rillig
7. C. Svendsen
8. D. Spurgeon

In Pollution

1. A. Coors
2. K. Duis
3. S. Anbumani
4. P. Kakkar
5. Jun Wang
6. Matthias C. Rillig
7. D. Eerkes-Medrano
8. D. Aldridge

Citations in the corpus

• Microplastic Contamination in Freshwater Environments: A Review, Focusing on Interactions with Sediments and Benthic Organisms (2020, background): “, 2014 [66] Rhine river, Germany, Europe Surface water Average: 892,777 ± 1,063,042 p/km2 Mani et al.”
• Microplastic in Surface Waters of Urban Rivers: Concentration, Sources, and Associated Bacterial Assemblages (2016, background): “Finally, our results were in the range of other riverine microplastic data (Lechner et al. 2014, Dris et al. 2015, Mani et al. 2015).”
• Microplastics as an emerging threat to terrestrial ecosystems (2018, background): “Consequently, a single production plant might contribute with more than 6% of the total estimated export of the Danube River to the Black Sea, which is about 4.2 t/day (Lechner et al., 2014).”
• Microplastics in freshwater ecosystems: what we know and what we need to know (2014, neutral): “[46] used”
• Microplastics in freshwater and terrestrial environments: Evaluating the current understanding to identify the knowledge gaps and future research priorities. (2017, background): “This knowledge will also inform our understanding of rivers and 511 freshwater bodies as transport pathways for plastics from land to oceans (Jambeck et al., 2015; 512 Lechner et al., 2014; Rillig, 2012).”
• Microplastics in freshwater systems: A review on occurrence, environmental effects, and methods for microplastics detection. (2017, background): “Only one study adopts 500-mm mesh in Austrian, leading to a much smaller content of microplastics (Lechner et al., 2014).”
• Analysis of environmental microplastics by vibrational microspectroscopy: FTIR, Raman or both? (2016, methodology): “Microplastics quantification is often performed by visual methods only [20, 24, 38].”
• Microplastics in freshwater systems: a review of the emerging threats, identification of knowledge gaps and prioritisation of research needs. (2015, background): “origin in spillage of plastic resin powders or pellets used for airblasting (Gregory, 1978, 1996), and feedstocks used to manufacture plastic products (Lechner et al., 2014; Zbyszewski et al., 2014).”
• Microplastic pollution is widely detected in US municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent. (2016, background): “, 2012; Dubaish and Liebezeit, 2013) and, more recently, freshwater systems (Eriksen et al., 2013; Free et al., 2014; Gasperi et al., 2014; Lechner et al., 2014; McCormick et al., 2014; Morritt et al., 2014; Yonkos et al., 2014; Dris et al., 2015).”
• Plastic Accumulation in the Mediterranean Sea (2015, background): “Recently, the plastic input into the Black Sea via the Danube River was conservatively estimated at 1,533 tons per year [28].”