RT journal article
T1 Microplastic pollution from pellet spillage: Analysis of the Toconao ship accident along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts
A1 Cocozza, P.
A1 Scarrica, V.M.
A1 Rizzo, A.
A1 Serranti, S.
A1 Staiano, A.
A1 Bonifazi, G.
A1 Anfuso Melfi, Giorgio
A2 Ciencias de la Tierra
K1 Microplastic
K1 Marine litter
K1 Beach pollution
K1 Northwest Atlantic coast
AB In December 2023, 25 tons of pellets were lost by the Toconao ship in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean in front ofthe Portuguese coast. In this work, a coastal stretch of 633 km in Asturias and Galicia (Spain) and NorthernPortugal was investigated to assess pellets’ concentration on 31 beaches. Field surveys were carried out in March2024 and focused on sampling plastic pellets deposited along the shoreline. All the 7263 sampled pellets werecharacterized by size, degradation level, and color, while one subset was characterized by weight (40 % of thetotal) and another subset by polymer type (15 % of the total) using FT-IR spectroscopy. The results reveal that 94% of the surveyed sites containing pellets, whereas the concentration values vary significantly among beaches,ranging from 0 to 40.3 pellets/kgdw. By combining the accounted variables, it emerges that 48.0 % of thecollected pellets can be linked to the Toconao spill.
PB Elsevier
SN 1879-3363
YR 2024
FD 2024-12-10
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/35871
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/35871
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 10-may-2026