Assessment of microplastics pollution level on clam farming and bathing beaches: a case study of Thanh Phu in Ben Tre, Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This study focused on the investigation microplastics (MPs) with a size of ≤1.0 mm in sand samples from Thanh Phu beach, Ben Tre, Vietnam. MPs in sand from the clam beach (from 39.67 ± 6.67 to 92.00 ± 12.93 items kg−1 dried sand) were higher than those from the bathing beach (from 21.33 ± 8.76 to 51.67 ± 16.11 items kg−1 dried sand), indicating a direct contribution of MPs from coastal aquaculture. For the clam beach, MPs in surface samples (0–4 cm) were lower than in deep samples (4–6 cm). In contrast, MPs in surface samples (0–2 cm) from the bathing beach were higher than deep samples (2–5 cm). A combination of microscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy methods confirmed that 62.5% of the representative MPs samples or 18.9% of the suspected MPs samples were plastics. Low-density polyethylene, polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate were the largest in abundance. Further studies are needed to assess the environmental risk of MPs accumulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Microplastics
• visual identification
• FTIR
• beach sand
• Ben Tre province

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2024.2377306

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.