Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord

Microfibers (MF) are one of the major classes of microplastic found in the marine environment on a global scale. Very little is known about how they move and distribute from point sources such as wastewater effluents into the ocean. We chose Adventfjorden near the settlement of Longyearbyen on the A...

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Published in:Frontiers in Environmental Science
Main Authors: Herzke, Dorte, Ghaffari, Peygham, Sundet, Jan Henry, Tranang, Caroline Aas, Halsband, Claudia
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Frontiers Media SA 2021
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Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168/full
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spelling crfrontiers:10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168 2024-06-23T07:44:59+00:00 Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord Herzke, Dorte Ghaffari, Peygham Sundet, Jan Henry Tranang, Caroline Aas Halsband, Claudia 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168/full unknown Frontiers Media SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Frontiers in Environmental Science volume 9 ISSN 2296-665X journal-article 2021 crfrontiers https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168 2024-06-11T04:09:10Z Microfibers (MF) are one of the major classes of microplastic found in the marine environment on a global scale. Very little is known about how they move and distribute from point sources such as wastewater effluents into the ocean. We chose Adventfjorden near the settlement of Longyearbyen on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago as a case study to investigate how microfibers emitted with untreated wastewater will distribute in the fjord, both on a spatial and temporal scale. Fiber abundance in the effluent was estimated from wastewater samples taken during two one-week periods in June and September 2017. Large emissions of MFs were detected, similar in scale to a modern WWTP serving 1.3 million people and providing evidence of the importance of untreated wastewater from small settlements as major local sources for MF emissions in the Arctic. Fiber movement and distribution in the fjord mapped using an online-coupled hydrodynamic-drift model (FVCOM-FABM). For parameterizing a wider spectrum of fibers from synthetic to wool, four different density classes of MFs, i.e., buoyant, neutral, sinking, and fast sinking fibers are introduced to the modeling framework. The results clearly show that fiber class has a large impact on the fiber distributions. Light fibers remained in the surface layers and left the fjord quickly with outgoing currents, while heavy fibers mostly sank to the bottom and deposited in the inner parts of the fjord and along the northern shore. A number of accumulation sites were identified within the fjord. The southern shore, in contrast, was much less affected, with low fiber concentrations throughout the modeling period. Fiber distributions were then compared with published pelagic and benthic fauna distributions in different seasons at selected stations around the fjord. The ratios of fibers to organisms showed a very wide range, indicating hot spots of encounter risk for pelagic and benthic biota. This approach, in combination with in-situ ground-truthing, can be instrumental in understanding ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Adventfjorden Arctic Longyearbyen Svalbard Frontiers (Publisher) Arctic Svalbard Longyearbyen Svalbard Archipelago Adventfjorden ENVELOPE(15.515,15.515,78.258,78.258) Frontiers in Environmental Science 9
institution Open Polar
collection Frontiers (Publisher)
op_collection_id crfrontiers
language unknown
description Microfibers (MF) are one of the major classes of microplastic found in the marine environment on a global scale. Very little is known about how they move and distribute from point sources such as wastewater effluents into the ocean. We chose Adventfjorden near the settlement of Longyearbyen on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago as a case study to investigate how microfibers emitted with untreated wastewater will distribute in the fjord, both on a spatial and temporal scale. Fiber abundance in the effluent was estimated from wastewater samples taken during two one-week periods in June and September 2017. Large emissions of MFs were detected, similar in scale to a modern WWTP serving 1.3 million people and providing evidence of the importance of untreated wastewater from small settlements as major local sources for MF emissions in the Arctic. Fiber movement and distribution in the fjord mapped using an online-coupled hydrodynamic-drift model (FVCOM-FABM). For parameterizing a wider spectrum of fibers from synthetic to wool, four different density classes of MFs, i.e., buoyant, neutral, sinking, and fast sinking fibers are introduced to the modeling framework. The results clearly show that fiber class has a large impact on the fiber distributions. Light fibers remained in the surface layers and left the fjord quickly with outgoing currents, while heavy fibers mostly sank to the bottom and deposited in the inner parts of the fjord and along the northern shore. A number of accumulation sites were identified within the fjord. The southern shore, in contrast, was much less affected, with low fiber concentrations throughout the modeling period. Fiber distributions were then compared with published pelagic and benthic fauna distributions in different seasons at selected stations around the fjord. The ratios of fibers to organisms showed a very wide range, indicating hot spots of encounter risk for pelagic and benthic biota. This approach, in combination with in-situ ground-truthing, can be instrumental in understanding ...
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Herzke, Dorte
Ghaffari, Peygham
Sundet, Jan Henry
Tranang, Caroline Aas
Halsband, Claudia
spellingShingle Herzke, Dorte
Ghaffari, Peygham
Sundet, Jan Henry
Tranang, Caroline Aas
Halsband, Claudia
Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord
author_facet Herzke, Dorte
Ghaffari, Peygham
Sundet, Jan Henry
Tranang, Caroline Aas
Halsband, Claudia
author_sort Herzke, Dorte
title Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord
title_short Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord
title_full Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord
title_fullStr Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord
title_full_unstemmed Microplastic Fiber Emissions From Wastewater Effluents: Abundance, Transport Behavior and Exposure Risk for Biota in an Arctic Fjord
title_sort microplastic fiber emissions from wastewater effluents: abundance, transport behavior and exposure risk for biota in an arctic fjord
publisher Frontiers Media SA
publishDate 2021
url http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168/full
long_lat ENVELOPE(15.515,15.515,78.258,78.258)
geographic Arctic
Svalbard
Longyearbyen
Svalbard Archipelago
Adventfjorden
geographic_facet Arctic
Svalbard
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Svalbard Archipelago
Adventfjorden
genre Adventfjorden
Arctic
Longyearbyen
Svalbard
genre_facet Adventfjorden
Arctic
Longyearbyen
Svalbard
op_source Frontiers in Environmental Science
volume 9
ISSN 2296-665X
op_rights https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.662168
container_title Frontiers in Environmental Science
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