Contamination and characteristics of microplastics in recreation beach sediment of the western part of the inner Gulf of Thailand

Contamination of microplastics along the coast is an environmental issue of the world problem that has negative impacts, due to inefficient waste management and increased input of sewage from various sources to natural water resource. The present study, microplastic contamination in beach sediments were carried out at 3 recreation beaches of western part of the inner Gulf of Thailand. Sediment samples at depth of 0-5 cm were collected from 9 stations, where located in the supratidal and intertidal zones in order to identify the characteristics and polymer-types of microplastic contaminations. The results showed that abundance of microplastics in sediment beach varied from 17–210 items/kg in supratidal zone and 16–70 in intertidal zone items/kg. According to total microplastic contamination, major shape of the microplastics was fragment (53%), followed by fiber (28%) and foam (12%). In addition, blue (25%), transparent (23%) and white (21%) were the most common colors. While microplastics sized 16–1000 μm were most abundant at all the sampling sites and beach zonation. The polymer types of microplastics were identified through micro-FTIR analysis, which was revealed that polytetrafluoroethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene and polyamide were the main types of microplastics present in the important recreation beach of the western part of the inner Gulf of Thailand.