DISTRIBUTION OF CURRENT-USE PESTICIDES AND PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS SORBED ON FLOATING PLASTICS IN EBRO DELTA AND MAR MENOR LAGOON WATERS

, García-Pimentel María Del Mar.

Plastic acts as passive samplers of organic and inorganic contaminants from the surrounding environment (air, water, soil, sediment, etc) (León et al., 2018) and can be used as integrative matrix for these contaminants in the marine environment. Previous studies have confirmed the concentration of organic contaminants in continental (León et al., 2018) and beached plastics (León et al., 2019) along the SE Iberian coast, but no information is available in relation to their concentrations in floating plastics. In this study the occurrence and distribution of current-use pesticides (CUPs), personal-care products, plastic additives, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and organochlorinated contaminants were characterized in floating plastics sampled in 2019 in surface waters from Ebro Delta and Mar Menor lagoon. The polymeric nature of plastic debris was characterized by attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry. Contaminants were extracted from plastic following the proposed method by León et al., (2019). This method consists of three successive ultrasonic extractions with MeOH and the analysis of the extract by stir-bar sorptive extraction coupled to gas-chromatography with mass-spectrometry. The presence and distribution profiles of these contaminants was consequence of the predominant anthropogenic pollution sources in each coastal ecosystem (tourism, agriculture, urban nuclei and transport) and some differences were found in their distribution profiles depending on the considered polymer and the physic-chemical properties of the substances.

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