Environmental problems due to plastic pollution.

BLETTLER MARTIN

tOURS

Conferencia; Ecohydraulics and dam removal, 3rd meeting; 2019

LE STUDIUM, Institute for advanced studies, Loire Valley

Plastic pollution causes biodiversity decline given by encounters between wildlife and plastic items. Ingestion is the most frequently observed interaction, followed by entanglement, which affects motility, often with fatal consequences. So far, interactions were reported for more than 1,500 species of plants and animals worldwide in about 1,100 scientific studies. However, only 10% of them were completed in rivers. From a scientific point of view, the knowledge about how contaminated are the great rivers in the planet is still scarce and biased, revealing the lack of a holistic scientific view. It is particularly important to encourage field-studies estimating river plastic emissions to the world?s oceans. Monitoring efforts must be focused in most polluted rivers worldwide, and particularly in countries with poor solid waste management. Microplastics (