Microplastics in Norwegian coastal areas, rivers, lakes and air (MIKRONOR1)

Abstract

The Norwegian Environment Agency (Miljødirektoratet, NEA) tasked the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) to initiate Norway’s National microplastic monitoring program. The program “Microplastics in Norwegian coastal areas, rivers, lakes and air (MIKRONOR)”, was designed to target the multitude of environments in the Norwegian coastal, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. The primary aim is to provide information on levels and types of microplastics in aquatic environments as well as in air and build on the baseline data already generated for a number of these environments on previous assignments by NEA. This report contains the first results of coastal sites, open marine waters, lakes, rivers and air including high-volume water samples (freshwater and marine, n=48), Ferrybox samples (marine, n=20), blue mussels (marine, n=71), vertical plankton net samples (marine, n=29) and 24 air samples (precipitation n= 12 and active air sampling n = 12).