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Correcting microplastic pollution and risk assessment in Chinese watersheds
Summary
Researchers compiled over 2,400 samples from 165 studies to create a national dataset of microplastic pollution across Chinese watersheds and developed a novel risk assessment framework. The study found that microplastic concentrations varied enormously across seven orders of magnitude, that population density and precipitation were key drivers of contamination, and that half of sampling sites fell into dangerous or extremely dangerous ecological risk categories.
Microplastics (MPs) are emerging pollutants that are attracting attention because of their potential threats posed and their widespread presence in the environment. MP pollution in Chinese watersheds requires assessment; however, existing risk models face data-scale biases. By compiling 2,474 samples from 165 articles, we constructed a national dataset on MPs and propose a novel framework that integrates rescaled MP concentrations with MP characteristics to recalibrate MP pollution and ecological risks. The results showed that MP concentrations show substantial variability across seven orders of magnitude, and corrected data offered a more accurate representation of environmental concentrations. MP shapes, polymers, and colors differed among river basins, and population density and precipitation were important drivers of variations in MP concentrations. MP shapes, colors, and sizes that were not previously considered are now included in the risk assessment of MPs. Furthermore, 50 % of the sampling sites were in the dangerous and extremely dangerous ecological risk classes. The concentrations measured at 16.98 % of the sampling sites exceeded the risk threshold, therefore posing ecological and toxicological risks. The assessment framework may provide overall insights into the differences in MP pollution in river basins.