Author: Olubukola Alimi

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

"The risks posed by plastic debris to the environment and human health, depend on several factors, including their 1) tendency to remain colloidally stable in the aquatic environment, 2) transport potential in natural aquatic environments, including the subsurface, and 3) potential to act as vectors for other pollutants in ecosystems. The scientific literature was critically reviewed and used to determine estimates of plastic loads and pathways in different environmental compartments. The key factors controlling the aggregation, deposition and contaminant cotransport of microplastics in the aquatic environment, as well as important knowledge gaps were identified and critically analyzed. From the critical data synthesis, it was shown that the rubbery polymer, polyethylene, generally has a higher contaminant sorption capacity than other synthetic plastic types. The next part of this thesis investigated the role of climate and temperature cycling on nanoplastic transport. It is shown that by ignoring the effect of freeze-thaw, a key component of cold climate regions, previous conclusions on nanoplastic mobility might have been overestimated. Controlled laboratory experiments were used to show that exposure of nanoplastics to repeated freeze-thaw cycles, such as those experienced in cold climates will lead to aggregation and reduced transport even in the presence of natural organic matter in soils and subsurface environments. In another study, the factors and mechanisms by which different plastic sizes interact with NOM (humic acid, fulvic acid and alginate) in simple and complex artificial and natural environmental matrices were investigated and compared. It was shown that the different organic molecules will interact with the different plastics in a size-specific manner. In the absence of NOM, the minimum CaCl2 concentration needed to destabilize the particle suspension is insensitive to plastic size. Although the presence of the polysaccharide alginate enhanced aggregation in CaCl2, it had no effect/stabilized nanoplastics in a complex ionic matrix. While there were no significant differences in the attachment efficiencies of both bare nanoplastics at the CCC (CaCl2) and in artificial seawater, the larger nanoplastics were more stable than the smaller ones in a natural seawater matrix. A critical literature review reveals that only ten percent of laboratory studies investigating the effects of microplastic pollution in ecosystems have used environmentally relevant (aged) particles. An extensive synthesis of laboratory effect studies in the context of environmentally relevant protocols for weathered microplastics, nanoplastics and leachates is presented which also provides a framework for method harmonization. Hence, in a final experimental study, the impact of environmental weathering on the physicochemical properties of microplastics originating from single-use plastics was investigated using a range of techniques. The impacts of these physicochemical changes on microplastic transport and contaminant facilitated transport are examined. Changes to the surface chemistry, polarity, morphology, and density all impacted the fate of the microplastics. The experimental results show that aging reduced the sorption of a hydrophobic contaminant, triclosan, to the microplastics while both pristine and aged plastics partially desorb this contaminant. Measurements of microplastic settling velocity show that aging significantly increased the mobility of the microplastics. The combined experimental findings and transport simulations imply that pristine plastics will undergo long range transport and may facilitate the mobility of hydrophobic contaminants in surface waters. Overall, these results advance our knowledge of how different environmental conditions will influence microplastic fate and transport and provide fundamental and mechanistic understanding of factors affecting microplastics stability in aquatic environments"--