Dissolved organic carbon leaching from plastics stimulates microbial activity in the ocean
By C. Romera-Castillo, Maria Pinto, Teresa M Langer, X. Álvarez‐Salgado, G. Herndl. Nature Communications, 2018
609 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Approximately 5.25 trillion plastic pieces are floating at the sea surface. The impact of plastic pollution on the lowest trophic levels of the food web, however, remains unknown. Here we show that plastics release dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into the ambient seawater stimulating the activity of heterotrophic microbes. Our estimates indicate that globally up to 23,600 metric tons of DOC are leaching from marine plastics annually. About 60% of it is available to microbial utilization in less than 5 days. If exposed to solar radiation, however, this DOC becomes less labile. Thus, plastic pollution of marine surface waters likely alters the composition and activity of the base of the marine food webs. It is predicted that plastic waste entering the ocean will increase by a factor of ten within the next decade, resulting in an increase in plastic-derived DOC that might have unaccounted consequences for marine microbes and for the ocean system. The impact of plastic debris floating at the sea surface on the lowest trophic levels of the food web remains unknown. Here, using leaching experiments, the authors show that plastics release dissolved organic carbon into the ambient seawater that is rapidly taken up by marine microbes stimulating their growth.
Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/660d5977f4d18ae008d461caf32858ac665fe17b
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In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
In Pollution
Citations in the corpus
- A Global Perspective on Microplastics (2020, background): “Rotjan et al. (2019) observed on average >100 microplastics (predominantly polyamide, polyester, and synthetic cellulose‐based fibers) per polyp of northern star coral (Astrangia poculatain) collected off of Rhode Island (U.”