Plastics and the ocean: Origin, characterization, fate, and impacts.

Chapter 11 treats the biodegradation of plastics, as opposed to the chemical degradation processes outlined in Chapter 8. Chapter 3 reviews three basic scientific methodological approaches to plastic pollution: emission rates, transport models and pollution identification. The list of papers cited in the Reference section of this chapter alone exceeds 200, a laudable marquee of all the chapters of this book. Chapter 2, for example, treats the chemical components (additives) meant to improve the properties of plastics (introduced as an issue on p. 20 of the first chapter). [Extracted from the article]