As early as 1970s, the problem of marine plastic waste was first mentioned in scientific literature, but it did not attract enough attention. At the beginning of this century, with the shocking report of the Pacific "plastic waste belt", the ubiquitous microplastics and its potential impact on the marine ecosystem, the social research and attention on marine plastic waste rose again.
At the first United Nations Environment Conference held in 20 14, plastic waste pollution was listed as one of the top ten environmental problems to be solved urgently in the world. At the second United Nations Environment Conference held in 20 15, the pollution in microplastics was listed as the second largest scientific problem in the field of environmental and ecological science research, and became a major global environmental problem alongside global climate change, ozone depletion and ocean acidification.
"microplastics has spread to the global waters, but at present, the understanding of microplastics's marine environmental behavior, ecological toxicity and mechanism of action is still not completely clear." In Zhang Weiwei's view, this also makes microplastics a hot spot and frontier field of international marine ecology and environmental science research.
In recent years, the National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center, relying on the national R&D key project, the special scientific research project of marine public welfare industry and the National Natural Fund, has carried out the research on marine microplastics monitoring technology and the ecological environment effect in the microplastics, and recently established the Marine Garbage and microplastics Research Center.
"We will mainly carry out research on standardized monitoring technologies and methods for marine garbage and microplastics, provide unified technical methods for marine garbage and microplastics monitoring in China, and organize marine microplastics monitoring in the waters under our jurisdiction to find out the distribution characteristics of marine microplastics in China as soon as possible. At the same time, marine ecotoxicology and microplastics ecological risk assessment research will be carried out, as well as monitoring and investigation of marine and polar microplastics. " Zhang Weiwei said that this will provide technical support for marine plastic pollution control in China and provide solid technical support for deep participation in international governance.