Occurrence and distribution of meso- and macroplastics in the water, sediment, and fauna of the Nile River, Egypt

Environ Monit Assess (2023) 195:1130 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11696-7 RESEARCH Occurrence and distribution of meso‑ and macroplastics in the water, sediment, and fauna of the Nile River, Egypt Yasmine A. M. Hassan · Ahmed E. A. Badrey · Alaa G. M. Osman · Aldoushy Mahdy Received: 18 January 2023 / Accepted: 7 August 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract The present study described the most recent findings concerning the abundance and distribution of plastic in water, sediment, and fauna in the Nile River of Upper Egypt as an interesting research point. The findings revealed that plastics were abundant in the water, sediments, fish, and crayfish throughout the sites. The Nagaa Hammadi site has the highest abundance of meso- and macroplastics in its water and sediment. African catfish had the highest abundance of meso- and macroplastics compared to the other species, while Nile tilapia had no mesoor macroplastics in its alimentary canal or gills in all sites. The Edfu site has the highest abundance of mesoplastics in the alimentary canals of African catfish, while the Nagaa Hammadi site has the highest abundance of mesoplastics in the gills, and macroplastics appeared only in the alimentary canal of African catfish from the El-wasta site. Only mesoplastics were found in the crayfish’s alimentary canal, with the Nagaa Hammadi site having the highest abundance. No macroplastics were detected in the crayfish’s gills or alimentary canal. Additionally, this work lets us understand how plastics behave in freshwater environments, and it is a step toward decision-makers taking appropriate measures to reduce their risk. Y. A. M. Hassan · A. E. A. Badrey (*) · A. G. M. Osman · A. Mahdy Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University (Assiut Branch), Assiut 71524, Egypt e-mail: ; AhmedBadrey765. Keywords Macroplastic · Oreochromis · Clarias · Procamparus · Nile River · Upper Egypt Introduction One of the main contributors to the so-called novel entities, which are being referred to as a “chemical intensification” as a result of the increasing global chemical production and the expanding global distribution of chemical products or consumer goods, are plastic polymers that degrade to microplastics (Martínez et al., 2021). Plastic, a lightweight and long-lived material, has significantly increased the environmental risk (Thompson et al., 2009). Since the 1950s, synthetic polymers have been produced and used effectively (Geyer et al., 2017). Currently, the global production of plastic is estimated to be ∼367 million metric tonnes in 2020 (Tiseo, 2022). Only 9% and 12% of plastic waste have been recycled and incinerated, while the remaining 79% of plastic waste is in landfills (UN Environment, 2018). The interest in studying plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems began in recent years and has continued to grow until now. In a study carried out by Kasavan et al. (2021) to explore research trends regarding plastic pollution in water ecosystems between 2000 and 2020, a total of 2182 papers on plastic pollution in water ecosystems were identified. This found that, as opposed to freshwater ecosystem–focused research, most earlier studies in phase I (2000–2006) and phase II (2007–2013) Vol.: (0123456789) 13 1130 Page 2 of 17 concentrated on plastic pollution studies in marine ecosystems. Researchers, however, concentrated more on plastic contamination in freshwater ecosystems, such as rivers, lakes, estuaries, and inland water, during phase III (2014–2020) (Kasavan et al., 2021). Egypt is the largest user of polymers in Africa, consuming around 5.4 million tons of them per year (Ritchie & Roser, 2020). Aquatic ecosystems are being negatively impacted by Egypt’s excessive plastic usage, lack of waste management, and unrestricted dumping of plastic garbage (Sayed, Hamed, Badrey, & Soliman, 2021). Most water sources include plastics or microplastics that, directly or indirectly, enter aquatic systems before entering the bodies of aquatic animals, where they cause several negative effects that have been reported recently in several studies, and finally entering the food chain (Hamed et al., 2019, 2020; Sayed, Hamed, Badrey, & Soliman, 2021). The aquatic environment contains plastics in a wide range of sizes, from micrometers to meters (Van Cauwenberghe et al., 2015). Discarded plastic waste is gradually broken into smaller particles under the combined actions of physical abrasion and ultraviolet radiation (Fu et al., 2020). They were classified according to their size (microplastic ≤ 0.5 cm) which includes nanoplastics, which are particles with dimensions below 0.1 μm (1–100 nm) (Gigault et al., 2018), mesoplastic from 0.5 to 2.5 cm, macroplastic 2.5 cm–1 m, and megaplastic >1 m (Lusher et al., 2017), which have been adopted by UNEP (2020). Plastic contamination of surface water (Lahens et al., 2018), sediment (Renzi et al., 2020), and biota (Karlsson et al., 2017) has been reported from different places globally. Most plastic pollution studies have concentrated on micro-, meso-, or macroplastics since research has shown that freshwater invertebrates and fish can ingest plastic particles. Very few of them reported all size ranges (Noik & Tuah, 2015). The Nile River is distinguished for its global significance and importance to Egypt as the longest river (6693 km) in the world (World Atlas, 2019), where it flows from south to north, passing through ten African countries before reaching the downstream country (Egypt), where its path starts from Aswan governorate in the far south, passing through eight governorates of Upper Egypt before flowing to Lower Egypt in Cairo, where it drains into the Mediterranean Sea through the Nile Delta. Vol:. (1234567890) 13 Environ Monit Assess (2023) 195:1130 It remains as the country’s principal supply of freshwater and provides almost all of its drinking and irrigation needs (Ali et al., 2014). It is the holy river of the ancient Egyptians, and the Nile’s historical dependency on agriculture, transportation, fishing, and tourism cannot be overstated in terms of how important a part it played in the development of ancient Egyptian civilizations (Dumont, 2009). The majority of plastic studies are still focused on the Red and Mediterranean seas, as well as some ecotoxicology laboratory experiments (Chatziparaskeva et al., 2022; El-Sayed et al., 2022; Hamed et al., 2019, 2020; Sayed et al., 2021,b; Shabaka, 2022), while the studies carried out on the Nile River so far are very few and were carried out only on the course of the Nile in Lower Egypt in Cairo and the Nile Delta (Khan et al., 2020; Shabaka et al., 2022). Recently, the study of plastic has increased globally as well as in Egypt, and many methods have been used to estimate it. Numerous techniques have been created to precisely measure the riverine plastic flux or stock (van Emmerik & Schwarz, 2019). One commonly used method is the bridges’ visual counting method (Castro (...truncated)