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Microplastic contaminants potentially distort our understanding of the ocean's carbon cycle
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Researchers tested whether conventional methods for quantifying organic matter and isotopic composition from marine samples are distorted by microplastic-derived carbon from polyethylene and polystyrene, using accelerator mass spectrometry on estuarine sediment-plastic admixtures to assess contamination effects on carbon cycle measurements.
We tested whether conventional methods used to quantify OM and its isotopic composition from marine samples are affected by the inclusion of Microplastic-derived carbon (Polyethylene and Polystyrene). Estuarine sediment was used as the natural background SOM pool due to its higher carbon content compared to suspended POM and DOM in seawater. MP samples were mixed with sediment to produce a range of weight percentages of MPs to be analyzed by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The data set contains raw data from the EA conducted on pure plastic, pure sediments, and admixtures.
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Researchers demonstrated that microplastic contamination in sedimentary organic matter samples causes systematic and predictable errors in elemental analysis, stable isotope (delta-13C), and radiocarbon (delta-14C) measurements used to study the ocean carbon cycle. Even 1% polyethylene contamination by mass can lower radiocarbon age estimates by ~4,000 years and misattribute ~60% of carbon to terrestrial sources instead of the true 20%, with errors scaling predictably with contamination level and polymer type.
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