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A Review on Microplastics Presence, Distribution, and Composition in Multiple Environmental Samples Across Canada
Summary
This review synthesizes Canadian microplastic studies across water, wastewater, biosolids, and sediment, finding fibers and fragments most prevalent and polyethylene, PET, and polypropylene as dominant polymers across matrices. The Canadian-specific analysis highlights significant data gaps and the need for standardized national monitoring as plastic contamination increasingly reaches remote environments and enters the human food chain.
Global production and consumption of plastics have dramatically increased in recent decades. While social benefits of plastic products are undisputed, plastics have resulted in negative environmental impacts. Through physical, chemical, and biological degradation processes, plastic fragments are formed, gradually breaking down into microscopic-sized particles over time. These tiny particles, known as microplastics (MPs, < 5 mm), have gained considerable attention due to their small size, widespread presence, bioavailability, and adverse effects on human and ecosystem health. MPs have been detected globally in all environments, including the human body, becoming a pressing global concern. Recently, regional, national, and international efforts have been made to study and quantify environmental impacts of MPs. This review provides an overview of the current state of MP studies, focusing on different sample types while specifically analyzing their characteristics including color, shape and chemical composition in Canada. For this review, a specific set of keywords separated by Boolean operators was used to collect relevant research on MPs in Canada. The most prevalent shapes in Canadian environmental samples were fibers and fragments, while blue, black, and clear are the most common colors. Polyethylene (PE), Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and Polypropylene (PP) are the most frequently encountered polymers in water, wastewater, biosolids, and sediment samples. Although there has been advancement in the examination of MPs in Canada, there is still a considerable knowledge gap, including uneven spatial coverage, inconsistent methods and reporting, scarse polymer/additive data, and a few long-term time series studies. Filling these knowledge gaps will help improve our understanding of the prevalence, origins, and impacts of MPs in Canada's varied ecosystems. Future research needs to include the creation of uniform data collection techniques and the introduction of long-term monitoring programs to measure MPs across varied ecosystems. This will help development of effective mitigation strategies to manage the increasing problem of plastic and MP pollution.