Abstract
Microplastics are persistent, synthetic polymers that have managed to spread even to the most remote places on earth. Studies reporting on the abundance of microplastics have recently increased worldwide, which has raised environmental concerns among scientific communities. Nevertheless, evidence of microplastic contamination from Turkey is limited even though the location is a critical point and the population is higher than most countries in the region. Thus, we aimed to detect microplastics in sediment samples collected from the Marmara Sea in Istanbul-Turkey. In this study, fourteen sediment samples were collected and sub-sampled, then plastic debris was extracted, quantified and characterized by the morphology and polymer structure. The result revealed that all of the samples contained microplastics, and their concentrations ranged between 0.3 and 85.6 g/kg sediment, and the most abundant plastic types were acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, ethylene vinyl acetate, and polystyrene.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 522-529 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
Funding
The authors thank to IAU Medical Laboratory Techniques students 2017 (2nd class 2nd teaching) for their help during experiments (extraction of samples). This research was founding by Istanbul Aydin University. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Istanbul Aydin University |
Keywords
- Microplastics
- Plastic pollution
- Sediment, marine, Turkey
