FEDER - IFREMER - FMRID
Kohesio
EPIC IFREMER
Microplastics (MP) are emerging but ubiquitous contaminants in all compartments of the marine environment, from coastal to offshore, in estuaries, on the surface or at the bottom. They are detected in all regions of the world, including Antarctica. Regionally, few studies have been carried out to assess contamination of the aquatic environment. However, the Seine estuary is likely to be heavily contaminated by micro-plastics following urban pressures and the numerous port and industrial activities present within it or upstream. The preliminary results of the Plastic-Seine project (IFREMER LER/N and LEESU) show the widespread contamination of our environments by micro-plastics, whether in the water column, sediment but also biota. If these first results provide a first overview of the contamination, to date, their representativeness in time and space, their spatio-temporal distribution on a fine scale is unknown due in particular to a limited number of campaigns carried out. Indeed, high costs (financial and time), rapid clogging of the sampling nets linked to the significant turbidity of the Seine and extremely time-consuming analysis time are all constraints. These questions of representativeness are key in understanding the dynamics of micro-plastics at the scale of a watershed and implicitly in the development of management strategies or the definition of reduction measures. The sampling methods and analytical rates of the methods currently deployed do not make it possible to answer questions about the variability of the distribution of PM depending on the different forcings (e.g. flow, waves, tide). Finally, some studies suggest an underestimate of the contamination of the “water” matrix to the extent that synthetic fibers and nano-beads from cosmetic products are not retained. At the same time, techniques such as Raman spectroscopy or ITRF are commonly used to identify the nature of polymers. However, for reasons of time, identification is often carried out on only part of the samples. Semi-qualitative or qualitative techniques are also developed but are poorly suited to fiber detection. Many authors have thus shown that around 20 to 40% of particles initially determined as micro-plastic particles were in fact non-plastic materials. Faced with these technical obstacles, it is therefore necessary to provide innovative methodological elements in terms of sampling and detection of micro-plastics.
Smarter Europe / Research and innovation / Research and innovation infrastructure (public)