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Assessment of Microplastic Pollution in a Crater Lake at High Altitude: a Case Study in an Urban Crater Lake in Erzurum, Turkey
Summary
Researchers discovered microplastic contamination in a high-altitude crater lake in Turkey, demonstrating that even remote mountain lakes far from urban centers are not protected from plastic pollution — wind and rain carry plastic particles across vast distances, threatening isolated freshwater ecosystems and the food chains they support.
Microplastics are materials which remain without decay in nature for many years. Thus, they have an essential role in environmental pollution. Microplastics (MPs) can be moved long distances by wind and rain because they can be degraded into small pieces due to oxidation and deterioration of the polymer forms when exposed to ultraviolet radiation like sunlight. Moreover, MPs affect human health badly via the food chain. The study was carried out in a crater lake at 2380 m altitude in Erzurum, Turkey. Samples from the lake were analyzed using micro-Raman and SEM devices. In a great number of samples analyzed with micro-Raman, MP materials were identified which are much smaller than encountered in the literature. It was concluded that the identified MPs are polyethylenes and polypropylenes by comparing with Raman spectra in the literature. Further, it was assumed that the pieces with different shapes and 8–15 μm sizes are MPs decayed due to ultraviolet radiation when SEM images of the samples were examined.