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An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microplastics (MP) data collection from the aquatic environment is a challenging endeavour that sets apparent limitations to regional and global MP quantification. Expensive data collection causes small sample sizes and oftentimes existing data sets are compared without accounting for natural variability due to hydrodynamic processes governing the distribution of particles. In Warnow estuarine sediments (Germany) we found significant correlations between high-density polymer size fractions (≥500 mm) and sediment grain size. Among potential predictor variables (source and environmental terms) sediment grain size was the critical proxy for MP abundance. The MP sediment relationship can be explained by the force necessary to start particle transport: at the same level of fluid motion, transported sediment grains and MP particles are offset in size by one to two orders of magnitude. Determining grain-size corrected MP abundances by fractionated granulometric normalisation is recommended as a basis for future MP projections and identification of sinks and sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic degradation rates in the marine environment are essential to understand. This study demonstrates that in plastic-microbial interaction experiments, residual monomeric and oligomeric content of PA6 significantly influences the development of dissolved organic carbon. While it is well recognized that additives in plastics should be considered during the inception of plastic-exposure experiments, residual monomers have yet to be prominently considered in the same light. As such, in degradation studies where residual contents of monomers and/or oligomers are not considered, degradation of synthetic polymers could be significantly overestimated. The substantial conversion of these monomeric and oligomeric leachates also has implications for plastic-biofilm development studies and microplastic-biota-based ingestion experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]