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Realizing the global presence of microplastics in urban lakes
Summary
A global literature review of microplastic research in urban lakes found widespread contamination across water, sediments, and fish, with published data concentrated in Asian megacities, while systematic open-access databases integrating raw cross-city data remain absent. Urban lakes serve as both sinks and exposure points for microplastics, making their monitoring critical for understanding human exposure risk in densely populated areas where billions of people live near potentially contaminated water bodies.
Lakes contribute to sustainable development of cities, but they also experience anthropogenic stress. Microplastic pollution of urban lakes has been studied actively in the past decade, and this knowledge needs systematization. A major bibliographical database “Scopus” was used to find the relevant literature. The location of lakes, sampled objects (water, bottom sediment, ice and snow, fish) and concentrations (also abundances) of microplastics, and supposed sources of pollution were established in the considered works. The urban lakes, where microplastics were studied, concentrate in Asia (Middle East, South and East Asia). Particularly, the published knowledge from such mega-cities as Chennai (India) and Wuhan (China) is abundant. Microplastics were studied chiefly in water and bottom sediment of lakes. Although their concentrations vary significantly, a wide presence of microplastics in urban lakes is evident. A challenge of this review was a selection of the sources where true urban lakes are mentioned. Open-access international databases summarizing raw data on microplastics in lakes from as much cities and countries as possible will be demanded in the future.