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Preface
FreshwaterMicroplastics asEmergingContaminants:
MuchProgress,ManyQuestions
Historically – if one can say that given the infancy of the field – environmental
plastic debris has been the baby ofmarine research.Driven by the rediscovery of
long forgotten, 1970s studies on the occurrence of small plastic fragments (today
termed microplastics) in the oceans, oceanographers and marine biologists
resurrected the topic in the early 2000s. Since then, thefieldhas rapidly expanded
andestablished thatplasticsareubiquitous in themarinesystem, fromtheArctic to
Antarctic and from the surface to the deep sea.
Whileobviously thesourcesofenvironmentalplasticsare land-based,muchless
research has been dedicated to investigating them in freshwater systems. At the
time ofwriting this book, less than four percent of publications had a freshwater
context, reflecting the idea that streams, rivers, and lakes aremere transport routes
transferringplastics to theoceans similar toa sewer.Because this is too simplistic,
this book is dedicated to the in-between. Our authors explore the state of the
science, including themajor advances and challenges, with regard to the sources,
fate, abundance, and impacts ofmicroplastics on freshwater ecosystems. Despite
themanygaps in our knowledge,wehighlight thatmicroplastics are pollutants of
emerging concern independent of the salinity of the surroundingmedium.
Environmental (micro)plastics arewhat somecall awicked problem, i.e., there
is considerable complexity involved when one tries to understand the impact of
these syntheticmaterials on thenaturalworld. Just as anexample, there is no such
thing as “the microplastic.” Currently, there are in commerce more than 5,300
grades of synthetic polymers.1 Their heterogeneous physico-chemical properties
will likely result in very heterogeneous fates and effects once they enter the
1According to the plastics industry’s information systemCAMPUS (http://www.campusplastics.
com, last visited on June20, 2017).
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Freshwater Microplastics
Emerging Environmental Contaminants?
- Titel
- Freshwater Microplastics
- Untertitel
- Emerging Environmental Contaminants?
- Autoren
- Martin Wagner
- Scott Lambert
- Verlag
- Springer Open
- Datum
- 2018
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-61615-5
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 316
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Chemie