Page - 87 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

waterswas found.Extensiveand in-depthstudiesareurgentlyneeded tobridge the knowledge gaps to enable amore comprehensive risk assessment ofmicroplastics in inlandwaters and to support the development of policy addressing this issue. 2 ProductionandUseofPlastics inAsia According to the data from Plastics Europe [27], world production of plastics reached 311 million metric tons in 2014, an increase of 38% from 2004. China and Japanare the two leadingcountrieswith thehighest plastic production inAsia accounting for 26%and 4%of theworld’s total production in 2014, respectively. Plastic production in the rest ofAsia accounted for 16%of theworld production. All togetherAsia produced nearly a half of theworld’s plasticmaterials in 2014. Theseplasticmaterials areused inawidevarietyofmarkets, includingpackaging, building and construction, automotive, electrical and electronic, agriculture, con- sumer and household appliance, etc. Polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)are themost-usedpolymer types andaccount for19.2%, 29.3%,and10.3%oftheplasticsdemandinEurope,respectively[27].Althoughthe production of plastics is the highest in Asia, the per capita consumption is low compared todeveloped regions.Forexample, thepercapitaplastic consumption is 9.7and45kgperpersoninIndiaandChina,comparingto65and109kgperperson inEurope and theUSA[28]. Plasticwastesare recycledat amuch lower ratio indevelopingcountries than in developed countries. In China, less than 10% of the plastic wastes are recycled, whileabout30%oftheplasticwastesarerecycledinEurope[27,29].What’smore, developingcountries usuallyhave ahighpercentageofmismanagedplasticwaste. Amongthe top20countries rankedbythemassofmismanagedplasticwaste,allof them are developing countries except the USA which has the highest waste generationratebut thelowestpercentageofmismanagedplasticwaste[20].Twelve Asian countrieswere on the listwithChina, Indonesia, and thePhilippines ranked top three. The percentage ofmismanaged plastic waste among theseAsian coun- tries varied from 1.0 to 27.7%. As a result the environmental release of plasticwastes ismore likely in theseAsian countries. 3 Microplastics in InlandWaters inAsia 3.1 OccurrenceofMicroplastics Although inland waters in Asia have a high potential to be polluted by micro- plastics, relevant studies are scarce among the literature.Only seven studieswere found from the databases accessible to us and are summarized inTable 1.Among these studies, onewas carriedout inMongolia,while all otherswere performed in Microplastic Pollution in InlandWaters FocusingonAsia 87