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Published on: July 1, 2017
Ecological risk assessment of marine microplastics using the analytic hierarchy process: A case study in the Yangtze
Feng Zhang1, Guyu Peng2, Pei Xu1
1State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China; Plastic Marine Debris Research Center, East China Normal University, 200062 Shanghai, China; Regional Training and Research Center on Plastic Marine Debris and Microplastics, IOC-UNESCO, Shanghai 200241, China.
Abstract:
Microplastic (MP) pollution is ubiquitous in the terrestrial and marine environments, even in the air. However, ecological risk assessment studies of microplastics are scarce. In the present study, an ecological risk assessment model was built to evaluate the risks of microplastics in the Yangtze River Estuary and adjacent marine areas. A basic index database of the impacts of MP pollution on the ecosystem was constructed around three types of indices, namely, the pressure, status, and response indices. While the expert scoring method was used to determine the weights of these indices, in view of the complexity of the ecosystem in the Yangtze River Estuary, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was used to evaluate its ecological risk. According to the model, microplastic pollution in the Yangtze River Estuary and adjacent marine areas was within a lower risk state, indicating that its risks for the marine ecosystem were still within a controllable range.
