Microscopic Particles Of Synthetic Polymers In Freshwater Ecosystems: Review And The Current State Of The Problem

Based on the analysis of scientific publications on the decomposition products of plastic waste (microplastics in the aquatic environment) in the Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) and eLIBRARY.RU (Scientific Electronic Library) databases, an assessment of the problem's representation in the scientific literature (up to October 2020) was carried out. It is shown that in the world, the study of microplastics problems is becoming an urgent area of research. The Web of Science database for a request containing the term "microplastic" produces 5273 publications (the first in 1975), 503 (9.5%) of which refer to freshwater ecosystems; in recent years, there has been a significant increase in the share of publications in this area from 4.5% in 2013 to 11% in 2020 (3 and 175 publications, respectively).In Russian literature (according to the eLIBRARY.RU database), the study of microplastics in the environment is poorly represented: only 149 publications (the first one in 2015). A significant part of publications (55%) are review articles and studies devoted to marine ecosystems; further in descending order - methodical work and work on mathematical modeling of the behavior of microplastics in environments (18%), on the effect of microplastics on living systems (5.8%). Only ten publications for 2015-2020 are directly related to the study of freshwater ecosystems (6.5%).The world production of plastics, the main sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment, their potential hazard to aquatic ecosystems, and information on the level of microplastics in various freshwater matrices are characterized.