Suspended microplastics in the surface water of the Yangtze Estuary System, China: first observations on occurrence, distribution.

By Shiye Zhao, Lixin Zhu, Teng Wang, Daoji Li. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2014

895 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Levels of microplastics (MPs) in China are completely unknown. This study characterizes suspended MPs quantitatively and qualitatively for the Yangtze Estuary and East China Sea. MPs were extracted via a floatation method. MPs were counted and categorized according to shape and size under a stereomicroscope. The MP densities were 4137.3±2461.5 and 0.167±0.138 n/m(3), respectively, in the estuarine and the sea samples. Plastic abundances varied significantly in the estuary. Higher densities in three sea trawls confirmed that rivers were the important sources of MP to the marine environment. Plastic particles (>5mm) were observed with a maximum size of 12.46 mm, but MPs (0.5-5 mm) constituted more than 90% by number of items. The most frequent geometries were fibres, followed by granules and films. Plastic spherules occurred sparsely. Transparent and coloured plastics comprised the majority of the particles. This study provides clues in understanding the fate and potential sources of MPs.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5733c592093e4d7a179b3d1dd4353968399cfafe

How researchers see this paper

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In Biomaterials

1. L. Su
2. Huahong Shi
3. Dongqi Yang
4. M. Seeley
5. R. Hale
6. C. Svendsen
7. D. Spurgeon
8. F. Galgani

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. Huahong Shi
2. L. Su
3. Dongqi Yang
4. Daoji Li
5. Jiana Li
6. Prabhu Kolandhasamy
7. F. Galgani
8. A. Andrady

In Pollution

1. Huahong Shi
2. L. Su
3. Dongqi Yang
4. Daoji Li
5. Jiana Li
6. E. Zeng
7. Prabhu Kolandhasamy
8. M. Seeley

Citations in the corpus

• Occurrence and ingestion of microplastics by zooplankton in Kenya's marine environment: first documented evidence (2018, background): “…synthetic fibres released from textiles as a result of washing clothes, and other plastics that come into the environment in intact form are called primary microplastics (Zhao et al. 2014; Alomar et al. 2016; Avio et al. 2017; Maes et al. 2017; Rodríguez-Seijo and Pereira 2017; Zobkov et al. 2017).”
• Microplastics in the aquatic and terrestrial environment: sources (with a specific focus on personal care products), fate and effects (2016, background): “5 mm) were also found in the Yangtze estuary in China [131].”
• River plastic emissions to the world's oceans (2017, background): “Surface samplings at the Chinese Yangtze River mouth showed considerably higher plastic concentrations than any other sampled river worldwide 17 with a reported 4,137 particles per cubic metre.”
• Toxic effects of microplastic on marine microalgae Skeletonema costatum: Interactions between microplastic and algae. (2017, background): “For example, the microplastic density was 0.167 ± 0.138 n/ m 3 in the East China Sea (offshore sea) (Zhao et al., 2014).”
• Microplastics in freshwater systems: A review on occurrence, environmental effects, and methods for microplastics detection. (2017, neutral): “As shown in Table 1, the researchers typically use net with 330 mm mesh to concentrate top water samples (Ryan et al., 2009; Hidalgo-Ruz et al., 2012; Eriksen et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2014; Mani et al., 2015; Baldwin et al., 2016; Su et al., 2016; Anderson et al., 2017).”
• Microplastics in freshwater and terrestrial environments: Evaluating the current understanding to identify the knowledge gaps and future research priorities. (2017, background): “Concentrations of microplastics in marine surface waters have been reported from 0.0005 415 particles L-1 (Carson et al., 2013) (calculated as per Table 1) to 16 particles L-1 (Song et al., 2014) with 416 a range of intermediate concentrations reported (Lusher et al., 2014; Zhao et al., 2014).”