Accumulation of microplastics on coastal beaches, China: Abundance,
composition and sources
Qian Zhou, Haibo Zhang, Yuan Li and Yongming Luo
Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai, PR
China.
E-mail:
hbzhang@yic.ac.cn
Microplastics refers to small pieces of plastics <5mm (defined as <1 mm in some
studies). Ingestion of microplastics and transfer in the trophic levels provides a
potential pathway for the accumulation of pollutants, monomers and plastic additives
to organisms with adverse effects. Therefore, it has been of concern worldwide as an
emerging contaminant. We collected data from field investigation and published
papers to address pollution of the microplastics on the shoreline, China. Several
coastal types were covered, including tourism beach, aquiculture beach, estuarine flat
and wetland. The data showed that microplasitcs occurred ubiquitously on the coastal
beach with various types, such as foam, particle, pellet, fiber and fragments. Size of
the observed microplasitcs varied from a few dozen micrometres to approximately
5mm. Abundance of the microplastics reached up to >1000 pieces per beach, and
among them the foam and fibers are most abundance, which has a close relationship
with coastal aquiculture. In addition, resin pellets could be found
in substantial
amounts in some tourism beachs, which might be result from leakage during shipment
followed by transport with tide. However, more evidence is required to support this.
Surface morphology of the collected microplastics from the beaches was also
identified by SEM-EDX, which showed that the surface was severely eroded after
weathering in the environment. The distribution of irregular porosities on the
mircroplastic surface might attribute to the higher adsorption capacity for toxic
pollutants. Our study provides an insight on future researches on microplastics
pollution on China’s coast.