Research Information System
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH, vol.1, no.1, pp.1-11, 2022 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Plastics are ubiquitous. It has been used in human activities, from agriculture to packaging, infrastructure, and health. The
wide range of usage makes plastics an omnipresent pollutant in the environment. This study investigated the abundance and
type of plastics in agricultural soil in the Adana/Karataş region in Turkey, where disposable low-tunnel greenhouse plastic
flms and irrigation pipes were in use. For this purpose, 1 kg of soil samples from the top 5 cm (from the surface) was taken
from 10 diferent sampling locations. An average of 16.5 ± 2.4 pcs/kg was found in the soil samples. The highest amount of
plastics was seen at the Bahçe-4 location with 39.7 ± 12 pcs/kg and the lowest amount of plastics at the Karataş-1 location
with 0.7 ± 0.3 pcs/kg. The average size of plastics was found to be 18.2 ± 1.3 mm. The average size of plastics originating
from greenhouse cover was 18.9 ± 1.4 mm, and from disposable irrigation pipes was 12.5 ± 3.5 mm. It was determined
that 41.9% of extracted plastics were microplastics, 36.3% were mesoplastics, 16.3% were macroplastics, and 5.6% were
megaplastics. Results indicated that residual plastics decreased in the soil where used plastics were removed after usage. As
a result, it is worth noting that a signifcant amount of plastics remain in soil due to plastics being used in agricultural areas.