Microplastics Distribution within Western Arctic Seawater and Sea Ice.

Microplastic pollution has emerged as a global environmental concern, exhibiting wide distribution within marine ecosystems, including the Arctic Ocean. Limited Arctic microplastic data exist from beached plastics, seabed sediments, floating plastics, and sea ice. However, no studies have examined microplastics in the sea ice of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area, and few have explored Arctic marginal seas' water column. The majority of the microplastic data originates from the Eurasian Arctic, with limited data available from other regions of the Arctic Ocean. This study presents data from two distinct campaigns in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Western Arctic marginal seas in 2019 and 2020. These campaigns involved sampling from different regions and matrices, making direct comparisons inappropriate. The study's primary objective is to provide insights into the spatial and vertical distribution of microplastics. The results reveal elevated microplastic concentrations within the upper 50 m of the water column and significant accumulation in the sea ice, providing evidence to support the designation of sea ice as a microplastic sink. Surface seawater exhibits a gradient of microplastic counts, decreasing from the Chukchi Sea towards the Beaufort Sea. Polyvinyl chloride polymer (~60%) dominated microplastic composition in both sea ice and seawater. This study highlights the need for further investigations in this region to enhance our understanding of microplastic sources, distribution, and transport.

Mitigation strategies to reverse the rising trend of plastics in Polar Regions.

Plastic marine pollution in the Arctic today illustrates the global distribution of plastic waste of all sizes traveling by wind and waves, entering food chains, and presenting challenges to management and mitigation. While currents move plastics from lower latitudes into the Arctic, significant waste is also generated by remote communities, as well as maritime activities, such as shipping, fishing and tourism, which are increasing their activities as seasonal sea ice diminishes. Mitigation strategies may include monitoring programs of plastic waste abundance and distribution, improved waste management in Arctic communities, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to reverse the transport of waste plastics and packaging from remote communities, incentivized gear recovery of abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear (ALDFG), gear tagging and tracking, and restricting tourism and employing "leave no trace" policies. Here we report how these mitigation strategies are employed in the Arctic to minimize plastic waste impacts, and move Arctic communities toward better materials management and circular economic practices. The evidence of harm from waste plastics exacerbated by the ubiquity of plastic marine pollution in all biomes, and the rapid reporting of ecological and social costs, together suggest that we know enough to act quickly to manage and mitigate plastics from all sources to the Arctic.

PCBs and PBDEs in microplastic particles and zooplankton in open water in the Pacific Ocean and around the coast of Japan.

PCBs and PBDEs in microplastics and zooplankton collected in surface water at 27 locations in the Pacific Ocean and around the coast of Japan were investigated. Both PCBs and PBDEs were observed in buoyant microplastics, even in smaller particles of 0.315-1 mm. Concentrations of Σ13 PCBs were 0.04-124 ng/g, and were higher in urban bay areas such as Tokyo Bay. Sporadic moderate to high concentrations of PBDEs were observed in both urban-offshore and rural-offshore locations, consisting mostly of higher-brominated congeners. From the latter, BDE 209 ranged from not detected to 2158 ng/g. The microplastic-to-zooplankton abundance ratio threshold was 0.6 for PCBs and 0.08 for PBDEs, above which exposure would be greater from microplastics than from zooplankton.