ENIVRONMENT ASIA

Volume 12, No. S, Month DECEMBER, Year 2019, Pages 48 - 53

Microplastic pollution in surface water of the chao phraya river in ang thong area

Anh Ta and Sandhya Babel

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As the top country for plastic production and consumption, Thailand generated more than 3 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2016. As a result of improper management, 0.15 to 0.41 million tonnes of plastic waste entered annually in the aquatic environment in Thailand. In recent years, a small size of plastic waste in term of microplastics (MPs) became a significant concern due to their persistence, ubiquity and potential to play as vectors for transfer organic pollutants to human and biota. This study reports the concentration of MPs of the Chao Phraya River at Pa Mok District – a huge agricultural area of Ang Thong Province. MPs were sampled on the river by a manta trawl with the mesh size of 300 microns. The samples were treated by hydrogen peroxide with the iron (II) sulfate as a catalyst to remove organic components and inspected under a microscope with different size ranges. The total number of MPs were found to be 41.77 particles/m3. The presence of different types of MPs was confirmed by FTIR spectroscopy, with a predominant abundance of polypropylene, polyamide 6, and polyethylene. Potential origins of these type of polymers are from plastic nets of aquatic farms and plastic films from mulching employed for cultivation.

Keywords

Microplastic, Chao Phraya River, Plastic waste, Ang Thong

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