Monitoring of styrene oligomers as indicators of polystyrene plastic pollution in the North-West Pacific Ocean

Bum Gun Kwon; Keiji Amamiya; Hideto Sato; Seon-Yong Chung; Yoichi Kodera; Seung-Kyu Kim; Eung Jae Lee; Katsuhiko Saido

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2017.04.060

Monitoring of styrene oligomers as indicators of polystyrene plastic pollution in the North-West Pacific Ocean

Chemosphere. 2017 Aug:180:500-505. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2017.04.060. Epub 2017 Apr 14.

Authors

Bum Gun Kwon¹, Keiji Amamiya², Hideto Sato², Seon-Yong Chung³, Yoichi Kodera⁴, Seung-Kyu Kim⁵, Eung Jae Lee⁶, Katsuhiko Saido⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioenvironmental & Chemical Engineering, Chosun College of Science and Technology, 309-1 Pilmundae-ro, Dong-gu, Gwangju, 501-744, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: kwonbg0@daum.net.
² Department of Chemistry, College of Science & Technology, Nihon University, 7-24-1, Narashinodai, Funabashi-shi, Chiba, 274-8501, Japan.
³ Department of Environment and Energy Engineering, College of Engineering, Chonnam National University, 77 Yongbong-ro, Buk-gu, Gwangju, 500-757, Republic of Korea.
⁴ National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 16-1 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8569, Japan.
⁵ Department of Marine Science, College of Natural Sciences, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro (Songdo-dong), Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 22012, Republic of Korea; Research Institute of Natural Sciences, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro (Songdo-dong), Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 22012, Republic of Korea.
⁶ Department of Bioenvironmental & Chemical Engineering, Chosun College of Science and Technology, 309-1 Pilmundae-ro, Dong-gu, Gwangju, 501-744, Republic of Korea.
⁷ National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 16-1 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8569, Japan; School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), University of Hawai'i at Mãnoa, 1000 Pope Rd, MSB 629, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA. Electronic address: katsu.saido@gmail.com.

PMID: 28427037
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2017.04.060

Abstract

Styrene oligomers (SOs) as global contaminants are an environmental concern. However, little is known on the distribution of SOs in the ocean. Here, we show the distribution of anthropogenic SOs generated from discarded polystyrene (PS) plastic monitored from the coastal ocean surface waters (horizontal distribution) and deep seawaters (vertical distribution) in the North-West Pacific Ocean. SOs concentrations in surface seawater and deep seawater ranged from 0.17 to 4.26 μg L^-1 (total mean: 1.48 ± 1.23 μg L^-1) and from 0.31 to 4.31 μg L^-1 (total mean: 1.32 ± 0.87 μg L^-1), respectively. Since there is no significant difference in the mean concentrations, SOs seems to be spread across marine environment selected in this study. Nevertheless, regional SOs appears to persist to varying degrees with their broad horizontal and vertical distribution in the ocean. Each horizontal and vertical distribution of SOs differs by approximately 1.95-2.57 times, probably depending on the events of weather and global ocean circulation. These results provide the distribution pattern of SOs for assessing environmental pollution arising from PS plastic.

Keywords: Distribution; Marine; Monitoring; Ocean; Polystyrene; Styrene oligomers.

MeSH terms

Environmental Monitoring*
Pacific Ocean
Plastics / analysis*
Polystyrenes / analysis*
Seawater / chemistry
Water Pollutants, Chemical / analysis*
Water Pollution, Chemical / statistics & numerical data

Substances

Plastics
Polystyrenes
Water Pollutants, Chemical