Studies on microplastic contamination in seagrass beds at Spermonde Archipelago of Makassar Strait, Indonesia

Open Access proceedings Journal of Physics: Conference series

Abstract. There is growing awareness and concern on microplastics pollution in marine environments. Seagrasses are among the most productive shallow water ecosystems, serving a diverse assemblage of fish and invertebrates. Sediment and benthic animal samples collected from small islands at Spermonde archipelago confirmed the presence of microplastics with different levels of contamination. The occurrence of microplastics for up to 28.29% and 25% of contamination level in sediments and benthic animals, respectively, clearly indicated an alarming state of the microplastics pollution in rich and productive shallow water seagrass ecosystem of tropical seas. Moreover, all positively contaminated microplastics of benthic animals are for human consumption and therefore pose threats for microplastics transfers which may facilitate pathways for a wide spectrum of organic pollutants entering the food web and affecting human health.

Journal of Physics: Conference Series PAPER • OPEN ACCESS

To cite this article: A Tahir et al 2019 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1341 022008 Download

Microplastics in water, sediment and salts from traditional salt producing ponds

Tahir, A.; Taba, P.; Samawi, M.F.; Werorilangi, S., (2019). Microplastics in water, sediment and salts from traditional salt producing ponds. Global J. Environ. Sci. Manage., 5(4): *-*.

DOI: 10.22034/gjesm.2019.04.0

ABSTRACT

Plastic pollution has universally known accumulated in all environment compartments and accelerating threat to the sustainability of earth. Field survey to examine the occurrence of microplastics in ancient sea water evaporation technology of ponds at Pallengu-Jeneponto, was conducted. From this sea salt producing ponds, samples of water, sediment and freshly harvested salts were collected. Sixteen samples each of water and sediments and 12 salts were collected. From 16 water and sediment samples there are 31 microplastics item discovered in 11 water samples (68.75% of total contamination) and 41 microplastics item observed in 10 sediment samples (62.5% total contamination), respectively. Interestingly, sampling points at sedimentation/ heating pools were found to be the locations with highest occurrence of microplastics in both water and sediment. There are 7 salt samples positively contaminated with 29 microplastics or 58.3% of total contamination, which predominated by line and fragment forms. Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy analysis has revealed polymers of polyvinyl acetate (41.7%), polyethylene (33.3%) and polystyrene (25%). There was no significant difference found on microplastics occurrence from 3 kinds of samples collected, although there was a decreasing trend of total microplastics found from water, sediment and salt. Microplastics abundance were ranged 7-55 items/L water, 14.6-50 items/kg sediments and 6.7-53.3 items/kg salt. With microplastics abundance reached over 53 microplastics items/kg salt, it is believed that continuous consumption by people will end up with possible accumulation of potentially absorbed of various toxic chemical pollutants which present in sea water as salt raw materials. The need for robust and practical strategy in water quality management for reduction of microplastics contamination in consumed salts is a must.

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