Microplastic pollution in tropical estuary gastropods: Abundance, distribution and potential sources of Klang River estuary, Malaysia

Microplastics receive global attention due to its strong presence in marine and freshwater organisms. Yet, there are few studies on estuarine organisms. This baseline study evaluates the abundance and distribution of microplastics in the gastropods of a tropical estuary in Selangor, Malaysia. The abundance of microplastics ranged from 0.50 to 1.75 particles/g or from 0.25 to 0.88 particles/individual. The variation in microplastic distribution between the upper and lower estuary indicates that the microplastics originated from the urbanised area of the Klang River estuary. microplastic sizes varied from 30 to 1850 mu m, with the majority being between 300 and 1000 mu m (57%). Characteristics of microplastics were dominant for fibres (91%) with black colour (50%). Polyethylene-propylene-diene (PE-PDM) and polyester were the main polymer materials. Assessing the contamination of gastropods by microplastics provides insight into the possibility of utilising gastropods as bioindicators that could be used for monitoring and baseline studies.

Automated summary

This study evaluates the abundance and distribution of microplastics in the gastropods of a tropical estuary in Malaysia, finding that microplastics mainly originate from urban areas in the estuary. The majority of microplastics are fibers with black color.