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Micro-plastics in Aquatic Environment: Source, Fate, Emerging Threats, and Regulatory Effort

International Journal of Environment and Climate Change 2023 1 citation ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 30 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Moses Kamau, Mwakio Tole, Mohamed Khalil Timamy

Summary

This review covers sources, distribution, and threats of microplastics in aquatic environments, tracing their movement through rivers, estuaries, lakes, and oceans and their accumulation in sediments and the food chain. The paper also reviews emerging policy frameworks aimed at reducing plastic pollution, providing a broad overview of the microplastic problem in water systems.

Study Type Environmental

Presences of plastics in aquatic environment, and their possible cascading along the food chain are an environmental concern. To understand the current setup in plastics pollution, we submit the evolution of the plastics industry, the production process, and the magnitude of plastics produced and plastic waste generated. In the second section, we give an over view of sources of micro plastics in aquatic environment including; domestic, leisure, aquaculture, maritime activities and horticulture. Thirdly, we address the behavior and distributions of micro plastics in aquatics system (rivers, estuaries, lakes and ocean) and their matrixes (surfaces, water column, and sediments). In fourth section, we raise the insidious natures of micro plastics pollutions, as a threat to life, and, in the fifth section we identify the developments in policies that targets to mitigate plastic pollution.

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