During 2019, the LEGAMBIENTE conducted a marine litter survey collecting 2270 pellets from 73 Italian beaches along the peninsula within a citizen science campaign. The geographical regions sampled were: Abruzzo, Calabria, Campania, Emilia Romagna, Lazio, Liguria, Marche, Molise, Puglia, Sardegna, Sicilia, Toscana e Veneto.

The sampling procedure consists in collecting items considering the part of the beach that undergo the dynamics of the undertow (about 5 meters of depths for all selected beaches), avoiding the back part of the beaches, as dunes or limiting structures, where pellets eventually deposited during strong storms or swells can no more be subject to sea water effect. The sampling protocol used aims to decrease the likelihood of collecting pellets that have spent most of their time out of the water, and whose aging process may have been caused by phenomena not considered in our study. During the survey, pellets with visible dye added were discarded, meanwhile all possible pellets shade were included. Then, pellets have been classified by colour using the Fanini [1] colour scale. The classification led to label shades from 1 to 14 as Light colour, from 15 to 27 as Medium coloured and from 28 to 36 as Dark coloured. Then, a sub sample of pellets (30 pellets from Tyrrhenian coast beaches) was analysed using the double-pulse micro-Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (DP-LIBS) technique.

To perform POPs extraction from pellets, we create a subsample considering beaches belonging to different regions of Italian peninsula, from south to north. The pellets from the various selected beaches were grouped together by colour categories, without considering the fouling or porosity parameters, as they are irrelevant for the purpose of the ongoing analysis.

Table 1 reports the complete pellets classification also considering the presence of the porosity and fouling of the samples.

Table 2 reports the spectra lines obtained using LIBS techniques [2] to detect metals/compounds on the pellets surfaces. Pellets of this sub sample have been selected, among the ones of ItPW sample, considering that they have relevant fouling on their surface. We selected 15 pellets for TUSCANY (8L, 5M and 2D); 10 for SARDINIA (4L, 4M and 2D); 4 for SICILY (2L, 1M and 1 PP pellet); 4 for LIGURIA (3L and 1D) and 5 for CAMPANIA (4L and 1M). All are PE pellets except the one of line 17 that is a PP pellet.

Table 3 reports the median value of PAHs and PCB extracted from resin pellets.

References

[1] Fanini, L., & Bozzeda, F. (2018). Dynamics of plastic resin pellets deposition on a microtidal sandy beach: Informative variables and potential integration into sandy beach studies. Ecological Indicators, 89, 309–316. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ECOLIND.2018.02.027

[2] Giugliano, R., Cocciaro, B., Poggialini, F., Legnaioli, S., Palleschi, V., Locritani, M., & Merlino, S. (2022). Rapid Identification of Beached Marine Plastics Pellets Using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy: A Promising Tool for the Quantification of Coastal Pollution. Sensors 2022, Vol. 22, Page 6910, 22(18), 6910. https://doi.org/10.3390/S22186910