Correcting microplastic pollution and risk assessment in Chinese watersheds

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) are emerging pollutants that are attracting attention because of their potential threats posed and their widespread presence in the environment. MP pollution in Chinese watersheds requires assessment; however, existing risk models face data-scale biases. By compiling 2,474 samples from 165 articles, we constructed a national dataset on MPs and propose a novel framework that integrates rescaled MP concentrations with MP characteristics to recalibrate MP pollution and ecological risks. The results showed that MP concentrations show substantial variability across seven orders of magnitude, and corrected data offered a more accurate representation of environmental concentrations. MP shapes, polymers, and colors differed among river basins, and population density and precipitation were important drivers of variations in MP concentrations. MP shapes, colors, and sizes that were not previously considered are now included in the risk assessment of MPs. Furthermore, 50 % of the sampling sites were in the dangerous and extremely dangerous ecological risk classes. The concentrations measured at 16.98 % of the sampling sites exceeded the risk threshold, therefore posing ecological and toxicological risks. The assessment framework may provide overall insights into the differences in MP pollution in river basins.