ET&C Perspectives THE PERSPECTIVES COLUMN IS A REGULAR SERIES DESIGNED TO DISCUSS AND EVALUATE POTENTIALLY COMPETING VIEWPOINTS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS ON CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES.

Annual global plastic production is estimated to be on the order of 280 million tons per year, with further estimates that as much as 10% of all plastic will become debris in the global marine environment [1]. The presence of plastic in the world’s seas and oceans can result in a myriad of physical hazards, such as entanglements, which can lead to suffocation or drowning, and physical obstructions in throats or digestive tracts. Plastic also can act as a vector of transport for both invasive species and— given its high capacity to sorb hydrophobic chemicals—organic chemicals, particularly those that are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) [2]. Assessing the risks associated with the presence of plastic in the marine environment thus represents a challenge, because the difficulties in prioritizing the various hazards with respect to their relative potential to affect populations and ecosystems are considerable. In an economic environment in which financial resources are limited, it is of critical importance to affected industries to identify efforts aimed at prioritizing and assessing the risks associated with hazards that have the potential to significantly impactmarine populations and ecosystems. Unfortunately, there currently exists a general lack of standardization associated with the quantification of plastics in the environment, which makes it difficult to adequately assess the extent of the problem. As noted by van Cauwenberghe et al. [3], there is a lack of standard methods and units used to quantify the debris; studies almost always focus on litter in 1 marine compartment only (a multimedia approach is needed); and to date, only a few studies have examined concurrently the occurrence of both macro- and microplastics in various compartments.