de Vos Asha, Aluwihare Lihini, Youngs Sarah, DiBenedetto Michelle H, Ward Collin P, Michel Anna P M, Colson Beckett C, Mazzotta Michael G, Walsh Anna N, Nelson Robert K, Reddy Christopher M, James Bryan D
Oceanswell, 9 Park Gardens, Colombo 5 00500, Sri Lanka.
The Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Perth, WA 6009, Australia.
ACS Environ Au. 2021 Nov 29;2(2):128-135. doi: 10.1021/acsenvironau.1c00031. eCollection 2022 Mar 16.
In May 2021, the cargo ship caught fire 18 km off the west coast of Sri Lanka and spilled ∼1680 tons of spherical pieces of plastic or "nurdles" (∼5 mm; white in color). Nurdles are the preproduction plastic used to manufacture a wide range of end products. Exposure to combustion, heat, and chemicals led to agglomeration, fragmentation, charring, and chemical modification of the plastic, creating an unprecedented complex spill of visibly burnt plastic and unburnt nurdles. These pieces span a continuum of colors, shapes, sizes, and densities with high variability that could impact cleanup efforts, alter transport in the ocean, and potentially affect wildlife. Visibly burnt plastic was 3-fold more chemically complex than visibly unburnt nurdles. This added chemical complexity included combustion-derived polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. A portion of the burnt material contained petroleum-derived biomarkers, indicating that it encountered some fossil-fuel products during the spill. The findings of this research highlight the added complexity caused by the fire and subsequent burning of plastic for cleanup operations, monitoring, and damage assessment and provides recommendations to further understand and combat the impacts of this and future spills.
2021年5月，一艘货船在斯里兰卡西海岸18公里处起火，泄漏了约1680吨球形塑料碎片或“ nurdles”（约5毫米；白色）。nurdles是用于制造各种最终产品的预生产塑料。暴露于燃烧、高温和化学物质会导致塑料结块、破碎、烧焦和化学改性，从而造成前所未有的复杂泄漏，既有明显烧焦的塑料，也有未燃烧的nurdles。这些碎片在颜色、形状、大小和密度上呈现出连续的变化，具有很高的变异性，这可能会影响清理工作、改变海洋中的运输，并可能影响野生动物。明显烧焦的塑料在化学上比明显未燃烧的nurdles复杂3倍。这种增加的化学复杂性包括燃烧产生的多环芳烃。一部分烧焦物质含有石油衍生的生物标志物，表明它在泄漏过程中遇到了一些化石燃料产品。这项研究的结果突出了火灾以及随后塑料燃烧给清理作业、监测和损害评估带来的额外复杂性，并提供了建议，以进一步了解和应对此次及未来泄漏的影响。
