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Tier 2
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Original research — experimental, observational, or case-control study. Direct primary evidence.
Environmental Sources
Food & Water
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Microplastic pollution in the rivers of the Tibet Plateau
Environmental Pollution2019
545 citations
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Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Score: 60
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0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Researchers collected water and sediment samples from rivers on the Tibet Plateau and found microplastic contamination even in this remote, sparsely populated region. The microplastics included fibers and fragments from synthetic textiles and packaging, likely transported by atmospheric deposition and human activity along river corridors. The study demonstrates that microplastic pollution has reached some of the most isolated freshwater systems on Earth.
The Tibet Plateau, the so-called Third Pole of the world, is home to the headstreams of many great rivers. The levels of microplastic pollution in those rivers, however, are unknown. In this study, surface water and sediment samples were collected from six sampling sites along five different rivers. The surface water and sediment samples were collected with a large flow sampler and a stainless steel shovel, respectively. The abundance of microplastics ranged from 483 to 967 items/m in the surface water and from 50 to 195 items/kg in the sediment. A large amount of small, fibrous, transparent microplastics were found in this study. Five types of microplastics with different chemical compositions were identified using micro-Raman spectroscopy: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), and polyamide (PA). These results demonstrate that rivers in the Tibet Plateau have been contaminated by microplastics, not only in developed areas with intense human activity but also in remote areas, where microplastic pollution requires further attention.