Seite - 102 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

the coastal regions and other freshwater environments can be applied to inland African waters. The aforementioned study in LakeVictoria is used to exemplify how small-scale investigations can provide early indications of MP pollution. Lastlywediscuss thecurrentchallengesandfutureneedsofMPresearch inAfrican freshwaters. Keywords Africa,AfricanGreatLakes, Freshwater,Microplastics,MPsampling 1 Introduction 1.1 Africa, theAnthropocene, andPlasticPollution As the birthplace of our species, the African continent holds a unique place in humanhistory.Currentscientificconsensusplaces theevolutionofmodernhumans in East Africa approximately 200,000 years ago from where they successfully dispersed approximately 72,000years agoduring the late Pleistocene [1, 2]. From hereourspeciescontinued tospreadandover thenext50,000yearsor socolonized themajorityof theEarth’s landsurface.Fast-forward through the followingepoch, theHolocene,which is regarded as being relatively stable in termsof climate, and wearriveatapoint in time inwhichhumankindhaveestablished themselvesas the dominant forceandmajordriver for environmental change.Accordinglyanewera is said tohavenowdawned–theAnthropocene [3,4].While theexact startdateof theAnthropocene issubject tomuchcurrentdebate, theadventof the industrialage (ca. 1800s) changed the dynamics between humans and the environment. The Anthropocene is thus defined by human actions which perturb the Earth’s land, oceans, and biosphere [5]. These dramatic effects include climate change, ocean acidification, deforestation, andplastic pollution. Plastics (andmicroplastics,MPs, defined as<5mm in size) are considered a hallmark of this new anthropogenic age, having become widely used in the last 60years [6], andarenowaubiquitouspollutant foundworldwideand inall aquatic compartments (surface waters, water column, and sediments) and numerous ani- mals (invertebrates,fish, seabirds, andmarinemammals) [7].Upuntil recentlyMP pollutionhadbeenviewed solely as amarine issue, but there is nowan increasing amount of information regarding the presence ofMPs in freshwaters [8, 9].MPs have been sampled from both freshwater lakes, such as Lakes Erie, Huron, and Superior inCanada[10],LakeGeneva inSwitzerland[11],andLakeGarda inItaly [12], and rivers, such as the River Thames in London (UK, [13]), River Seine in Paris (France, [14]), and theDanube [15], tonamebut a few. In this last study, the massandabundanceofdriftingplastic items in theAustrianDanubewere found to behigher than those of larval fish [15],which is an indicationof themagnitude of the problem. However, there is remarkably little information on the presence of MPs in the freshwaters ofAfrica – theplacewhere it all started for humans! In this chapterwe begin by outlining the scope for plastic pollution inAfrican inlandwaters, both through thenatureof thewaterbodiesand thehumanpressures 102 F.R.Khanet al.