Micro-plastic pollution along the Bay of Bengal coastal stretch of Tamil Nadu, South India

T G Sunitha; V Monisha; S Sivanesan; M Vasanthy; M Prabhakaran; K Omine; V Sivasankar; A Darchen

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144073

Micro-plastic pollution along the Bay of Bengal coastal stretch of Tamil Nadu, South India

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Feb 20:756:144073. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144073. Epub 2020 Nov 26.

Authors

T G Sunitha¹, V Monisha¹, S Sivanesan¹, M Vasanthy², M Prabhakaran³, K Omine⁴, V Sivasankar⁵, A Darchen⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Pachaiyappa's College (affiliated to University of Madras, Chennai 600005), Chennai 600 030, Tamil Nadu, India.
² Department of Environmental Biotechnology, School of Environmental Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli 620 024, Tamil Nadu, India.
³ Department of Botany, Pachaiyappa's College (affiliated to University of Madras, Chennai 600005), Chennai 600 030, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁴ Department of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, Nagasaki University, 1-14 Bunkyo-machi, Nagasaki 8528521, Japan.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, Pachaiyappa's College (affiliated to University of Madras, Chennai 600005), Chennai 600 030, Tamil Nadu, India. Electronic address: sivshri.20@gmail.com.
⁶ UMR CNRS no 6226, Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes, ENSCR, 11, Allée de Beaulieu, CS 50837, 35708 Rennes Cedex 7, France.

PMID: 33279200
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144073

Abstract

In the present-day context, micro-plastic particles in a marine environment are increasingly ubiquitous and of considerable persistence. In line with the micro-plastic pollution, the present contribution is devoted to the investigation of micro-plastic particles (MPs) along the urban sandy beach called Marina, the renowned longest beach in India. Along the sea coast of about 5 km, the quantification of micro-plastic particles using optical microscope evidenced the granular, filamentous, filmy and tubular fragments in a total of 72 marine samples including those filtered in the marine water column (WAT; 24 samples), those found in wet sediment (WET; 24 samples) and those found in dry sand (DSS; 24 samples). The filamentous-typed plastics of 79%, 57% and 52%, respectively in WET, WAT and DSS dominated over the other granular and tubular types. The micro-plastic particles were in the range of 60-820 items per m³, 60-1620 items per kg and 20-1540 items per kg for WAT, WET and DSS, respectively. The standard deviation for the microplastics abundance were 193.1, 396.6 and 364.6 for WAT, WET and DSS respectively. Upon visual inspection, the micro particles were observed in eight different colors and most of the samples were found to contain two different fragment types. Apart from the optical microscopic examination, the micro-plastics particles were studied by scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with elemental analysis by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The energy spectral graphs displayed that the micro-filaments and micro-tubular particles contained polyesters and fluoro-polymers. The presence of few micro-filaments of polypropylene and polyethylene was also evidenced from their atomic percentage values of carbon of about 88% and 93%, respectively. The presence of fluoro-polymers and polyesters was also confirmed by Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR). Excepting the fluoro-polymers, the micro-plastics particles contained elements arising from sea water (Na, Cl, S, Mg, Ca, K). Heavy metals such as Cu, Mn, Mo, Ru and Rh were observed in micro-tubular fragments. Fe and Ti elements were detected with the highest atomic percentage of 17.19 and 19.84 in micro-tubular fragments. All the observations and analyses give a photography of the nature and the spatial distribution of MPs along this Indian beach.

Keywords: FTIR; Microplastics; Microscopic quantification; SEM/EDS.