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Occurrence and abundance of macro, meso and microplastics along the coasts of the Persian Gulf (case study: Bushehr Province coast)
Summary
This survey of 17 coastal stations in Iran's Bushehr Province on the Persian Gulf documented widespread plastic pollution at macro, meso, and microplastic scales, with fibers making up the majority and fragments under 500 micrometers being most common. Polyethylene, polystyrene, PET, and nylon were the dominant polymer types identified by infrared analysis. The Persian Gulf is a semi-enclosed, heavily industrialized sea, and this data establishes baseline contamination levels needed to track how pollution changes over time.
One of the most critical emerging pollutants in aquatic environments is plastic waste. During this study, the presence and abundance of macro, meso, and microplastics at 17 stations on the coast of Bushehr province were investigated. The average abundances of macro-plastics and meso-plastics in coastal sediment were 41.0 and 121.8 items/m, respectively. The mean abundance of microplastics at depths of 0-5 cm, 5-15 cm, 0-15 cm and the mean of two depth abundance were 226.2 ± 76.7 and 47.1 ± 16.1, 273.4 ± 78.8, and 136.7 ± 39.4 particles/kgd.w., respectively. Fibers with 55 %, black microplastics with 40 %, and microplastic size of <500 μm with 48 % had the highest abundance, respectively. According to the FTIR spectra, polyethylene, polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate, and nylon were the most common types of polymers in plastics. Although plastics were observed at all stations, a comparison of our results, with other studies around the world shows that the region is moderately contaminated with plastics.