Large microplastic particles in sediments of tributaries of the River Thames, UK - Abundance, sources and methods for effective quantification.

By Alice A. Horton, C. Svendsen, Richard J. Williams, D. Spurgeon, E. Lahive. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2017

825 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Sewage effluent input and population were chosen as predictors of microplastic presence in sediments at four sites in the River Thames basin (UK). Large microplastic particles (1mm-4mm) were extracted using a stepwise approach to include visual extraction, flotation and identification using Raman spectroscopy. Microplastics were found at all four sites. One site had significantly higher numbers of microplastics than other sites, average 66 particles 100g-1, 91% of which were fragments. This site was downstream of a storm drain outfall receiving urban runoff; many of the fragments at this site were determined to be derived of thermoplastic road-surface marking paints. At the remaining three sites, fibres were the dominant particle type. The most common polymers identified included polypropylene, polyester and polyarylsulphone. This study describes two major new findings: presence of microplastic particles in a UK freshwater system and identification of road marking paints as a source of microplastics. CAPSULE This study is the first to quantify microplastics of any size in river sediments in the UK and links their presence to terrestrial sources including sewage and road marking paints.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Oceanography, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d747d5a92de23c4a6c2800d3d2136f0d6c3c24b9

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In Environmental Chemistry

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Citations in the corpus

Microplastic Contamination in Freshwater Environments: A Review, Focusing on Interactions with Sediments and Benthic Organisms (2020, background): “With regard to MPs in sediments there are also discrepancies with respect to measurement units: while the author of [10] expressed the number of MPs as particles/m2, the authors of [71] considered the number of MPs per 100 g of sediment.”
Microplastics Effects on Reproduction and Body Length of the Soil-Dwelling Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (2020, background): “By demonstrating that C. elegans can and does ingest MP particles, we established one prerequisite for the potential development of toxic effects (Horton et al., 2017; Kim and An, 2019) in C. elegans.”
Microplastics in freshwater fishes: Occurrence, impacts and future perspectives (2021, background): “…tyres and litter) by physical, chemical and biological processes is an important source of secondary MPs to freshwaters (Fadare et al., 2020; Horton et al., 2017; Karbalaei et al., 2018; Knight F I G U R E 1 Generalized overview of microplastics in freshwater fishes including sources,…”
Assessment of microplastics in freshwater systems: A review. (2019, methodology): “, 2015), and terrestrial input from soil erosion or surface runoff (Horton et al., 2017).”