Microplastic pollution in the Yangtze River Basin: Heterogeneity of abundances and characteristics in different environments

Microplastic pollution in the Yangtze River Basin has become a major concern; however, the variations in different environmental compartments are unknown. Here, we compiled published information including detection methods, occurrence, and characterization of microplastics from 624 sampling sites in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental pollution (1987) 2021-10, Vol.287, p.117580-117580, Article 117580
Main Authors: Zhang, Zeqian, Deng, Chenning, Dong, Li, Liu, Lusan, Li, Haisheng, Wu, Jia, Ye, Chenlei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Characteristic
Difference
Linear discriminant analysis
Microplastic
Occurrence
Yangtze river
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Summary:Microplastic pollution in the Yangtze River Basin has become a major concern; however, the variations in different environmental compartments are unknown. Here, we compiled published information including detection methods, occurrence, and characterization of microplastics from 624 sampling sites in river water, river sediment, lake and reservoir water, and lake and reservoir sediment in the Yangtze River Basin. The spatial distribution of sampling sites shows fractal pattern and was uniformly concentrated around the main stream of the Yangtze River and the lake geographical zone. Collection, pretreatment, identification, and quantification processes varied among different studies. Non-parametric tests were performed to compare the different microplastic indices. A Pearson correlation analysis was used to study the relationship between microplastic pollution and local socioeconomic conditions. We found that the microplastic size and abundance distribution in river water and lake and reservoir water showed different patterns for different sampling methods, indicating that different methods influenced the results. Population density and urbanization rate are suggested to be important factors influencing the spatial heterogeneity of microplastic abundances in water, rather than in sediment. The microplastic abundances in lake and reservoir water were higher than that in river water in bulk samples. However, microplastic abundances among different sediment environments shows no significant difference. For bulk water samples and sediment samples overall, the proportion of small microplastics (
ISSN:0269-7491
1873-6424
DOI:10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117580