Journal
JOURNAL OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
Volume 389, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.121846
Keywords
Microplastic; Atmosphere; East Indian Ocean; South China Sea; Pearl River Estuary
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program [2016YFC1402205]
- National Natural Science Fund of China [41676190]
- ECNU Academic Innovation Promotion Program for Excellent Doctoral Students [YBNLTS2019-007]
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At present, microplastic (MP) is pervasive globally and has a regional difference. Recent studies have identified MP in the terrestrial atmospheric environment. However, the connection between terrigenous atmospheric MP emissions and impacts over the ocean is not well known. Here, we present the distribution of atmospheric MP abundance over the ocean based on a transoceanic survey conducted across 21 sampling transects from the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) to the South China Sea (SCS) and then to the East Indian Ocean (EIO). The abundance of atmospheric MP over the PRE (4.2 +/- 2.5 items/100 m(3)) was significantly higher than that over the EIO (0.4 +/- 0.6 items/100 m(3)). However, the abundance of atmospheric MP in the SCS (0.8 +/- 1.3 items/100 m(3)) was not significantly different from the EIO and PRE. This result revealed that MP undergoes long-range transport, more than 1000 km away, through the atmosphere, but atmospheric MP transmission as the main source of oceanic MP based on transoceanic studies is not a plausible assumption. Furthermore, backward trajectory model analysis of 21 sampling transects preliminary showed the potential sources of atmospheric MP over the PRE, SCS, and EIO.
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