Abstract
Marine plastic debris, including microplastics <5 mm, contain additives as well as hydrophobic chemicals sorbed from surrounding seawater. A volunteer-based global monitoring programme entitled International Pellet Watch (IPW) is utilizing the sorptive nature of plastics, more specifically of beached polyethylene (PE) pellets, in order to measure persistent organic pollutants (POPs) throughout the world. Spatial patterns of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine pesticides have been revealed. Original data of IPW show large piece-to-piece variability in PCB concentrations in pellets collected at each location. This is explained by the combination of slow sorption/desorption and large variabilities of speed and route of floating plastics. The sporadically high concentrations of POPs, both sorbed chemicals and hydrophobic additives, are frequently observed in pellets and the other microplastics in open ocean and remote islands. This poses a chemical threat to marine ecosystems in remote areas.
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Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge volunteers for IPW for collecting and sending the pellets from beaches worldwide. The authors thank Dr. Takashi Miyao of Japan Meteorological Agency for providing the buoyant microplastic samples from Pacific Ocean. The authors thank Mr. Okazaki for treatment of the microplastic samples.
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Yamashita, R. et al. (2018). Hazardous Chemicals in Plastics in Marine Environments: International Pellet Watch. In: Takada, H., Karapanagioti, H.K. (eds) Hazardous Chemicals Associated with Plastics in the Marine Environment. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 78. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2018_299
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2018_299
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