2. Behavioral Biology TALKS - Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft

����46 Hannes Imhof
A new, highly efficient method for the quantification of Plastic Particles in
sediments of aquatic ecosystems
Authors: Hannes K. Imhof 1 , Johannes Schmid, Reinhard Niessner, Natalia P. Ivleva,
Christian Laforsch
Affiliation: 1 LMU Munich, Bio Dept. II
Although plastic debris is constantly accumulating in aquatic environments, the
impact on aquatic ecosystems is not yet fully understood. Once plastic litter enters
natural environments, UV radiation, mechanical abrasion, biological degradation and
disintegration cause the formation of tiny fragments. Those persist and are not
completely degraded in any human scale of time. Harmful consequences of plastic
debris for aquatic organisms have been already shown. Next to mechanical
impairments of swallowed plastics mistaken as food, many plastic associated
chemicals are proven to be carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting or acutely toxic.
Hence, it is indispensable to identify and quantify the types of plastic debris of
different size classes in aquatic habitats for future risk assessment studies. A first
important step in order to assess the consequences of plastic debris in aquatic
ecosystems is a reliable, verified and standardized method to quantify the amount of
plastic particles. Hence we developed an accurate method based on density
separation in a ZnCl2 solution (at density 1.6 - 1.7kg/l), which allows for an extraction
and quantification of plastic particles from sediments of aquatic environments.
Furthermore, we constructed a Plastic Sediment Separator (PSS) which enables a
reliable separation of different types and size classes (including S-MPP) of plastic
particles from sediment samples. Our study is the first providing validated recovery
rates of 100% for large micro-plastic particles (L-MPP, 1-5 mm) and 95.5% for small
micro-plastic particles (S-MPP,