Abstract
Marine pollution by various debris is rising in the context of increasing urbanization, industrialization and worldwide trade. Here, we review marine macro-litter with focus on sources, abundance, distribution, and impact on aquatic wildlife, human health, and the economy. We observe that about 75–80% of marine litter originates from land-based sources, including poorly managed landfills and improper disposal. Macro-litter ingestion by marine life is of growing concern, in particular concerning the presence of plastics and associated pollutants, e.g., bisphenol A and phthalates, in fishes. These pollutants are accumulated and transferred to human via seafood. Marine plastic pollution induces a substantial rise of economic costs due to the decline of ecosystem services. Mitigation of marine plastic pollution should be done by following the ten Rs principles of refuse, rethink, reduce, re-use, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, recycle, and recover.
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Van-Giang Le contributed to methodology, data curation, investigation, visualization, and writing—original draft. Hoang-Lam Nguyen performed investigation, data curation, and writing—review and editing. Minh-Ky Nguyen contributed to conceptualization, methodology, data curation, investigation, and writing—original draft—review and editing. Chitsan Lin contributed to resources, data curation, writing—review and editing, and supervision. Nguyen T. Quang Hung performed investigation and writing—review and editing. Adiprao Khedulkar performed visualization and writing—review and editing. Nguyen Kim Hue performed writing—review and editing. A. Kumar Mungray performed visualization and writing—review and editing. D. Duc Nguyen contributed to supervision, conceptualization, investigation, visualization, and writing—review and editing.
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Le, VG., Nguyen, HL., Nguyen, MK. et al. Marine macro-litter sources and ecological impact: a review. Environ Chem Lett 22, 1257–1273 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-024-01702-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-024-01702-w