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Microplastics in Freshwater Environments – With Special Focus on the Indian Scenario
Summary
This review examines microplastic pollution in freshwater environments globally with a focus on the Indian context, finding that despite India being one of the world's largest contributors to marine plastic pollution, freshwater microplastic research in India remains almost entirely absent, and calling for systematic river catchment monitoring to quantify land-to-ocean plastic fluxes.
Microplastics (MPs) are one of the major emerging pollutants, but there are many unknowns about the fluxes, transport pathways, and fate of these pollutants, including the effects on human health and other life forms. In this chapter, we discuss the various works done on freshwater MPs across the globe, with a special focus on studies in India. India is considered one of the largest global contributors to marine plastic pollution, but very few studies in India have addressed MPs pollution in the freshwater environment. Recently there have been a few studies on MPs pollution in India, but most of these studies are on coastal or marine sediments, and studies on freshwater environments are almost non-existent. Thus, we suggest more extensive research on MPs quantification and monitoring in various river catchments to gain a more detailed understanding of the contribution from the Indian sub-continent to the marine environment. This will also improve the knowledge on the effects on the ecosystem and human health, which will aid in minimizing the plastic emission to the ocean environment and reduce the risk to all ecosystems.