Application form for the International Session in the 18th Symposium on Environmental
Chemistry
Title of presentation : International Pellet Watch: Global monitoring of POPs using beachedplastic resin pellets
Authors (first, middle, and last names; affiliation should be in parentheses; presenter should be underlined)
Yuko Ogata, Hideshige Takada, Satoru Iwasa (Laboratory of Organic
Geochemistry, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology), Rei
Yamashita (Graduate school of Fisheries Sciences, Hokkaido University)
Resident country : Japan
E-mail address of corresponding author: shige@cc.tuat.ac.jp
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Title : International Pellet Watch: Global monitoring of POPs using beached plastic resin pellets
Authors : Yuko Ogata, Hideshige Takada, Satoru Iwasa (Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry, Tokyo University ofAgriculture and Technology), Rei Yamashita (Graduate school of Fisheries Sciences, Hokkaido University)
Introduction : Plastic resin pellets are small granules, generally with shape of a cylinder or a disk with a diameter of afew mm. These plastic particles are the industrial raw material of plastics which are transported to manufacturing sites
where “user plastics” are made by re-melting the pellets and molding them into the final products. Resin pellets can beunintentionally released to the environment, both during manufacturing and transport. The released resin pellets arecarried by surface run-off, streams and river waters, eventually leading to the ocean. Because of their environmental
persistence, they are distributed widely in the ocean and are now found on beaches all over the world. Because of thehydrophobic nature of the plastic surfaces, hydrophobic pollutants such as PCBs and DDTs are adsorbed to the pellets
from the surrounding seawater with concentration factors of up to 106. Because the resin pellets are distributed onbeaches over the world, and because collection and shipping of the pellets are easy, we proposed global monitoring of
persistent organic pollutants (POPs) using these beached plastic resin pellets, that is “International Pellet Watch”(Takada, 2006). In this paper, the latest results of our monitoring is presented.
Materials and Methods : Beached plastic resin pellets from 32 locations of USA, UK, Netherland, Italy, Greece,Portugal, Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Australia, Mozambique,South Africa were analyzed for PCBs, DDTs and HCHs. The pellets were sorted by far-infrared spectrometer andcolor difference meter to select yellowing polyethylene (PE) pellets which were proven to accumulate higher
concentrations of PCBs (Endo et al., 2005). To consider piece-to-piece variation, 5 pools (one pool consist of 5 piecesof pellets) were analyzed for each location and the median concentrations were used to represent individual locations.
Pellets were extracted with hexane by maceration. The extracts were purified by silica gel column chromatography.
PCBs and DDE were measured by gas chromatograph equipped with ion-trap mass spectrometer (GC-MS). DDT,DDD, and HCHs were gas chromatograph equipped with electron capture detector (GC-ECD)
Results and Discussion : PCB concentrations in the polyethylene pellets were highest on US coasts (100 - 500 ng/g),
followed by western European countries (e.g., U.K. and Netherlands) and Japan (50 - 100 ng/g), whereas lower intropical Asia, southern Africa and Australia (5 – 50 ng/g), as shown in Fig.1. The spatial pattern was well correlatedwith that of the monitoring results of mussel watch (Fig.2), indicating that concentrations of hydrophobic contaminantsin the plastic pellets reflect the pollution status of the coastal environments. DDTs showed high concentrations on thewest coast of USA (~300 ng/g) and Vietnam (~200 ng/g). In Vietnam, DDT was predominant over its metabolites(DDE and DDD), suggesting current usage of the pesticide. High concentrations of HCHs were detected in the pellets
from southern Africa (~30 ng/g), whereas HCHs showed trace concentrations in the other areas in the world (~ 1 ng/g orlower). This suggests current usage of the pesticide in southern Africa.
The present paper demonstrated the utility of International pellet watch. However, our spatial coverage is still
very limited and of course the strength of the programme will be related to the coverage we can achieve. Please collectresin pellets on your nearby beaches and send them to us. We call for pellets.

References :Endo, S. et al. (2005) Mar. Pollut. Bull., 50, 1103-1114.
Monirith et al. (2003) Mar. Pollut. Bull., 46, 281-300.
NOAA (2007) http://www8.nos.noaa.gov/cit/nsandt/download/mw_monitoring.aspx
Takada, H. (2006) Mar. Pollut. Bull., 52, 1547-1548.
Yamaguchi et al. (2000) Chiku-kagaku, 34, 41-57.