Persistent Organic Pollutant in Microplastics

The term partition coefficient refers to the equilibrium distribution of a solute between two phases separated by a boundary. In this case, the two phases are the solid plastic and seawater. Any compound (such as a POP) in seawater wiU readily diffuse into the hydrophobic plastic as well resulting in an equilibrium concentration of the compound in the plastic will be very much higher than that in seawater (Ogata et al., 2009). The partition coefficient is the ratio of the concentrations, and in the case of plastics in seawater can be expressed as follows  

PAH=32-605 ng/g i3 CB=2-106ng/g, 2HCH HCH=0-0.94ng/g. Had the samples been collected from beaches in industrial areas, these concentrations might have been much higher. 

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