Ecotoxicity of Microplastics in Freshwater Biota

Abstract

Micro plastics are primarily classified as individual pieces of synthetic material made of wide range of organic polymers which is generally called as ‘plastic’. Micro plastics are generally preproduction pellets, micro beads, polymer fibers and degraded micro plastic. Micro plastics make up to as much as 85 percentage of the plastic pollution in the shorelines. This large percentage in the total number of pollutant causes ecological stress caused by the biomagnifications along the food chain. Estimations show that globally majority of micro plastics comes from the runoff of 10 rivers along which includes the Ganges and Indus. To understand the role rivers, play as micro plastic carriers from land to oceans, the sampling of micro plastic is done at the relatively less populated part of Noyyal river and test are carried out to identify presence of micro plastic in the sample. Visual Identification method was used to identify the micro plastic components with relative ease and economy.