The effects of sediment properties on the aeolian abrasion and surface characteristics of microplastics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Microplastics (less than 5 mm diameter) are significant environmental contaminants whose small sizes and low densities facilitate transport by wind. Transport by wind erosion alongside soils or sediments results in mechanical abrasion of the plastic surfaces which can alter their physical and chemical properties. This paper uses laboratory simulations to determine the effects of up to 216 h of aeolian abrasion on polyethylene microplastics by angular, sub-rounded and rounded mineral sediments. During the abrasion process the mineral particles break down producing small fragments which adhere to the microplastic surfaces altering their surface roughness and chemistry. With increasing duration of abrasion the microplastic surface becomes coated with mineral fragments changing the dominant surface element from carbon to oxygen and silicon reflecting the composition of the erodents. The coating develops more rapidly when microplastics are abraded with angular sediments as these produce a lot of small fragments within the first 1-2 h. However, after more than 200 h of abrasion all the erodents had similar effects. A conceptual model of microplastic surface change is presented in which the plastic cracks and fractures, then flattens along with increasing density of sediment fragment cover. Surface changes may affect the ability of the plastics to transport airborne contaminants.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Sedimentology of plastics: state of the art and future directions'.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".