Microplastic Contaminants in the Sediment of the East Coast of Saudi Arabia

Hamza Jawad Jawad Al-Shaikh Ali, Assad A Ahmed Al-Thukair, Abdurahiman Kambrath Pulikkoden and Basheer Chanbasha

A chapter in Advances and Challenges in Microplastics from IntechOpen

Abstract: Microplastic contamination in the sediment of the east coast of Saudi Arabia was not addressed by any study. The objective of this study is to obtain the first measurement of microplastic abundance at four different beaches on the east coast of Saudi Arabia (Khafji, Jubial, Dammam, and Salwa). Sediment samples were collected from both high tide and low tide zone. A total of 586 microplastic particles were collected from all the sites with an average particle size of 1.55 ± 0.94 mm. The majority of microplastic particles (77%) were less than 2 mm in size. Microplastic abundance ranged from 5.5 ± 1.55 to 21.2 ± 0.68 particle/kg (51.1 ± 14.71 to 152.8 ± 21.32 particle/m2) in low tide region, and from 6.3 ± 4.05 to 16.5 ± 4.98 particle/kg (50.6 ± 31.21 to 204.5 ± 64.15 particle/m2) in high tide region. The most dominant colors were transparent (34%) and blue (30%), while the fiber was the most common shape (96%). Polyethylene terephthalates were the common polymer type of fibers, while polyethylene and high-density polyethylene were common in fragments and filaments.

Keywords: microplastic; marine contamination; sediments; Arabian Gulf; microplastic contaminants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q52 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/85531 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:291172

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.109019

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().