eChapter Name: Section 3: Aquatic Environment Management
Impacts of Microplastics in The Aquatic Environment
9789358876352
eBook Name: FISHERIES BIOLOGY, AQUACULTURE AND POST-HARVEST MANAGEMENT: VOLUME 03
by Kalaiselvan Keerthika, Pandurengan Padmavathy, Velu Rani
Introduction
Plastics has the versatile properties like light weight, durability, less expensiveness, and it is readily available for the consumers usage. Due to these diverse properties, the usage of the plastics is increasing day to day and their production has been increased drastically in the past 50 years (Cressey, 2016). At present, global plastics production has reached to 159 million tonnes. This diversified consumption has led to the production of enormous amount of plastic waste (Hahladakis et al., 2018) and their properties allows for long range transport in the ocean (Baalkhuyur et al., 2018). According to the Earth Action reports, nearly 68,64,299 tonnes of plastic waste will end up in nature due to imbalance between the plastics consumption and production. India is among 12 countries responsible for 52 % of the world mismanaged plastic waste (Plastic Overshoot Day: Report 2023).
Marine litter occurrence and impacts are common in worldwide marine systems (Bhattacharya and Khare, 2019) and they are degraded into micro sized particles called microplastics through a various physical, chemical and biological processes such as U-V light, wind and ocean currents (Solomon and Palanisami, 2016). Microplastics are < 5mm in size and are further divided into large and small microplastics of size 1–5 mm and 20 µm–1 mm, respectively (Loder and Gerdtz, 2015). Microplastics are classified into 2 categories: i) primary microplastics, intentionally produced as small sizes, used in cosmetics, microfibers from clothing, fishing nets, and their shape, size, colour, and chemical composition may vary depending upon the products. ii) Secondary microplastics are the tiny particles including fibres, fragments formed by the degradation or breakdown of larger plastics particles due to the UV rays from sunlight oxidation process. These particles are generated from the plastic films, accidentally or intentionally discarded fishing ropes and nets, plastic bottles and plastic bags etc. (Andrady, 2011).