Microplastic occurrence and composition were investigated along the Polish coast (southern Baltic Sea) on 12 beaches differing in terms of intensity of their touristic exploitation, urbanisation and sediment characteristics. Their mean concentrations varied between 76 and 295 items per kg dry sediment. Fibres and plastic fragments were the dominant microplastic types. Overall, no relationship was found between their concentrations and sediment characteristics. Fine sediments were not identified as microplastic pollution traps. The highest microplastic concentrations were recorded at some urban beaches indicating that population density and the level of coastal infrastructure development are important factors affecting microplastic pollution level on beaches. On the other hand, microplastic concentrations in national parks did not differ substantially from the other beaches. Our results suggest that sediment accumulation processes may exceed microplastic accumulation, and overcome the effect of tourism and/or urbanisation, highlighting the role of the beach hydrodynamic status in structuring beach microplastic pollution.

The increasing amount of marine microplastics and nanoplastics is due to primary (P-MPs) and secondary sources (S-MPs). Among small P-MPs and fibres from textiles, nurdles or industrial dust, the microbeads from cosmetics (peelings, scrubs) are dominant. The polyethylene and polypropylene debris, already <5 mm, enlarge Plastisphere and have a complex influence on environmental processes. Fortunately, the situation has changed with the limitation of synthetic materials in scrubs in recent years. This paper summarizes the six years of studies (2015-2021) on microplastics in cosmetics available on the Polish market. It focuses on those still available and presents the potential of Raman spectroscopy for the efficient qualitative and quantitative characterization of those materials. Finally, surface morphology's vital role in microplastics' general behaviour is underlined. The SEM/EDX and numerical modelling enables a more detailed description of particles.