Haritha Thulaseedharan Nair¹, Siddhuraju Perumal^1,

The purpose of the current study was to assess whether the freshwater ecosystems of Coimbatore are polluted with microplastics, quantify the amount of microplastics in these freshwater ecosystems by analysing the water, sediment and fish samples from five major lakes and thereby providing baseline data on the microplastic pollution status in freshwater ecosystems of Coimbatore. All the studied lakes were polluted with a considerable amount of microplastics identified in water, sediment and fish samples. Sediment samples had more microplastics than water and fish in all lakes except one. Fifteen different polymer types were identified from these extracted microplastics, which included common polymers such as PP, PVC, PET, etc. and also polyisoprene, polysulfone, cellulose nitrate, etc that are not commonly identified in previous literatures, which are mainly used for the production of N95 masks, surgical gloves etc. This justify their presence as our sampling period was post-covid. In fishes, microplastics were identified in gills, gastrointestinal tracts and flesh. The presence of microplastics in the edible tissues of fish heats up the risk of microplastics entering humans via the food chain.

Microplastic pollution, freshwater ecosystem, ATR-FTIR