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Tracing history of pollution by pre-production plastic pellets and changes in environmental regulations by using coastal sediment archives
Summary
Researchers collected dated sediment cores from the Hakefjord near Stenungsund on the Swedish west coast, a location adjacent to Sweden's largest polyethylene and PVC pellet production facilities, to reconstruct the historical accumulation of pre-production plastic pellets using radiometric dating. They found that pellet accumulation in sediments has tracked production increases since 1963, with approximately 0.75 million tonnes of polyethylene pellets now produced yearly at the site, and used sediment archives to trace the influence of changing environmental regulations.
Plastic particles pose a significant threat to the marine environment. All plastics will eventually degrade, breaking down and creating smaller sized particles, so-called microplastics. In the ocean, sooner or later microplastics will sink and end up on the sea floor. Therefore marine sediments are an important reservoir for microplastic accumulation. By combining radiometric dating of sediment cores with the extraction of microplastics from different core intervals representing different time periods, the rate of plastic accumulation over time can be determined. In this study, we collected sediment cores in the Hakefjord, in proximity to Stenungsund, a small town on the Swedish west coast and home to Sweden's largest producer of plastic pellets. There are two manufactures: one is producing polyethylene (PE) and the other one is producing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pellets. The production of PE started in 1963 and had a constant production increase since then. Today approximately 0.75 million tonnes of PE pellets are produced yearly, which corresponds to 5 Also see: https://micro2024.sciencesconf.org/559331/document
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