Spatiotemporal occurrence and characteristics of microplastics in the urban road dust in a megacity, eastern China.

The pervasive issue of microplastics pollution has garnered public attention, yet urban residents remain unaware of the threat within their living spaces. Urban road dust, as primary reservoirs for environmental microplastics, offers an insightful perspective into their occurrence and characteristics. This study investigated microplastics in the urban road dust in Nanjing, a megacity in eastern China, to reveal their spatiotemporal pattern.

Metabolic impacts of polystyrene microplastics on the freshwater microalga Microcystis aeruginosa.

Microplastics (plastic particles < 5 mm; MPs) are ubiquitous in aquatic environments but their potential adverse ecological effects on biota remain poorly understood. This is in part because in typical ecotoxicology tests the toxic effects of MPs were found to be limited. To capture the potential find-scale effects of MPs on freshwater organisms, we employed ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry based untargeted metabolomics to investigate the metabolic impact of polystyrene microbeads microplastics (PS-MPs) of different sizes (0.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of microplastics in an urban river network area.

Microplastics contamination in the environment is a global problem, but little is known about their dynamics in urban river networks, an important site of microplastics occurrence and harboring complex transport pathways. In this study, we investigated the spatiotemporal dynamic of microplastics in a typical urban river network in eastern China from December 2018 to September 2019. microplastics abundance (mean ± standard deviation) in the river network ranged from 2.

Distribution and sedimentation of microplastics in Taihu Lake.

Microplastics have been reported in environmental media for decades, but gaps in our knowledge about them still remain. We investigated the third biggest freshwater lake in China - Taihu Lake - and the 30 major rivers around it. Microplastics were detected in lake water and sediment, and in river water, at abundances varying from 1.