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Contamination and distribution of buried microplastics in Sarakkuwa beach ensuing the MV X-Press Pearl maritime disaster in Sri Lankan sea
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Researchers studied microplastic contamination at Sarakkuwa beach in Sri Lanka following the MV X-Press Pearl shipping disaster of May 2021, finding that 2-5 mm partially pyrolyzed LDPE fragments and plastic nurdles had penetrated up to 2 m into beach sediments. The contamination profile differed markedly from baseline samples collected before the disaster, showing persistent deep burial of spilled plastic pellets.
Abundance of buried microplastics in sand profiles and pellet pollution index at Sarakkuwa beach, at west-coast of Sri Lanka was studied as a case study due to the receival of plastic nurdles and debris from the MV X-Press Pearl ship disaster in May 2021. Sand collected at 7 locations to a depth of 2 m in different depths for a beach segment of 200 × 25 m during October 2021 and sand samples obtained from beach surface during March 2020 from the same location were analyzed for microplastics. Beach was contaminated with 2-5 mm sized partially pyrolyzed LDPE fragments and nurdles demonstrating a peak abundance of 13.3702 g/kg and1 mm-500 μm sized LDPE fragments up to 2.0 m depth. High concentrations of Mo and Cr were observed in the sand collected in 2021. Sarakkuwa beach is critically polluted by nurdles, partially pyrolyzed microplastics, and toxic elements from ship disaster.
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