2020 年 57 巻 2 号 p. 78-82
After the rain fall occurred, we often observed the plastic garbage such as plastic bags and PET bottles in the waterside. However, nobody knows the environmental fates of plastic garbage in the water environment. Plastics such as the container packaging are gradually decomposed in the environment, and they become microplastics. It is necessary to specify the sources in order to solve the aquatic environment pollution with microplastics. Most researchers who were focusing on the microplastics in marine tended to analyze the microplastics which size was bigger than 300 μm. Recently, some researchers start to focus on smaller size of microplastics. There are many microfibers of the fiber origin such as fleeces, which sizes were about 30 μm. It has been understood like this that the aquatic environment pollution with microplastics is serious as the size of them becomes small. To know where the microplastics are generated, and what size, and where they exist is one of the emergent issues in the world.