The Côte d’Argent, France: Quantification of Plastic Pollution in Beach Sediments
- Pollution with anthropogenic waste, particularly persistent plastic, has now reached every remote corner of the world. The French Atlantic coast, given its extensive coastline, is particularly affected. To gain an overview of current plastic pollution, this study examined a stretch of 250 km along the Silver Coast of France. Sampling was conducted at a total of 14 beach sections, each with five sampling sites in a transect. At each collection site, a square of 0.25 m2 was marked. The top 5 cm of beach sediment was collected and sieved on-site using an analysis sieve (mesh size 1 mm), resulting in a total of approximately 0.8 m3 of sediment, corresponding to a total weight of 1300 kg of examined beach sediment. A total of 1972 plastic particles were extracted and analysed using infrared spectroscopy, corresponding to 1.5 particles kg−1 of beach sediment. Pellets (885 particles), polyethylene as the polymer type (1349 particles), and particles in the size range of microplastics (943 particles) were most frequently found. The significant pollution by pellets suggests that the spread of plastic waste is not primarily attributable to tourism (in February/March 2023). The substantial accumulation of meso- and macro-waste (with 863 and 166 particles) also indicates that research focusing on microplastics should be expanded to include these size categories, as microplastics can develop from them over time.
Document Type: | Article |
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Language: | English |
Author: | Daniela Bornstein, Johannes Steinhaus |
Parent Title (English): | Sustainability |
Volume: | 16 |
Issue: | 7 |
Article Number: | 2992 |
Number of pages: | 19 |
ISSN: | 2071-1050 |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:1044-opus-82636 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/su16072992 |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Place of publication: | Basel |
Publishing Institution: | Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg |
Date of first publication: | 2024/04/03 |
Copyright: | © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. |
Keyword: | Atlantic coast; beaching; infrared spectroscopy; microplastic; plastic pollution |
Departments, institutes and facilities: | Fachbereich Angewandte Naturwissenschaften |
Institut für Technik, Ressourcenschonung und Energieeffizienz (TREE) | |
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC): | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 57 Biowissenschaften; Biologie / 577 Ökologie |
Entry in this database: | 2024/04/12 |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |