Efficient Atmospheric Transport of Microplastics over Asia and Adjacent Oceans.
Environ Sci Technol
; 56(10): 6243-6252, 2022 05 17.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35482889
We developed a regional atmospheric transport model for microplastics (MPs, 10 µm to 5 mm in size) over Asia and the adjacent Pacific and Indian oceans, accounting for MPs' size- and shape-dependent aerodynamics. The model was driven by tuned atmospheric emissions of MPs from the land and the ocean, and the simulations were evaluated against coastal (n = 19) and marine (n = 56) observations. Our tuned atmospheric emissions of MPs from Asia and the adjacent oceans were 310 Gg y-1 (1 Gg = 1 kton) and 60 Gg y-1, respectively. MP lines and fragments may be transported in the atmosphere >1000 km; MP pellets in our model mostly deposited near-source. We estimated that 1.4% of the MP mass emitted into the Asian atmosphere deposited into the oceans via atmospheric transport; the rest deposited over land. The resulting net atmospheric transported MP flux from Asia into the oceans was 3.9 Gg y-1, twice as large as a previous estimate for the riverine-transported MP flux from Asia into the oceans. The uncertainty of our simulated atmospheric MP budget was between factors of 3 and 7. Our work highlighted the impacts of the size and morphology on the aerodynamics of MPs and the importance of atmospheric transport in the source-to-sink relationship of global MP pollution.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Poluentes Químicos da Água
/
Microplásticos
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
País como assunto:
Asia
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article