The fate of plastics in the ocean has been an issue of raising concern, but large knowledge gaps exist on the transport and spatial patterns of plastic and plastic-bound pollutants. In addition to the additives present in plastics, plastics can carry (due to sorption) other organic pollutants to remote regions. Even though the toxicity of plastics is often due to the leaching of plasticizers and other plastic-bound pollutants, and their subsequent accumulation in organisms, there are few assessments of the coupling of plastics and other pollutants in the oceans. Here we show the first global distribution of a major family of plasticizers, organophosphate esters (OPEs), in water, air and plankton from the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well in the coastal Antarctica. The spatial trends of these plasticizers, as well those of other pollutants, are chemical dependent, but generally, with lower concentrations in the open Pacific Ocean and the highest concentrations of-Brazil and of-South Africa. At coastal Antarctica higher concentrations are driven by the amplification of snow/rain mediated transport, among other factors. In oceanic surface waters, the concentrations of OPES, hydrocarbons, perfluoroalkyl substances, and other pollutants, are not correlated with those of plastics. The air-water fugacity ratios show that there is a net atmospheric deposition of most OPEs and other legacy and emerging organic pollutants to the ocean. The plasticizer content in plastic, as well as the water-plastic (or air-plastic) partitioning of organic pollutants, cannot account for the atmospheric deposition and the field measurements of seawater concentrations of organic pollutants. Despite the uncertainties in plastic abundance in the ocean, these observations suggest that the decoupling of plastics and plasticizers in the oceans is due to their different transport and biogeochemistry during their journey from plastic use in continents to oceanic and Antarctic waters.

Decoupling of the transport of plastics, plasticizers, and other organic pollutants to the global ocean and Antarctica

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