Cellulose-Based Wet Wipes Undergo Limited Degradation in River Environments - Data

This dataset supports the manuscript titled “Cellulose-Based Wet Wipes Undergo Limited Degradation in River Environments”. The environmental fate of cellulose-based “biodegradable” wet wipes in freshwater ecosystems remains poorly understood, despite growing market demand and legislative shifts banning plastic-containing alternatives. This study investigated the environmental persistence and microbial degradation of two commercially available cellulose-based biodegradable wet wipe brands. Research was conducted in upland stream mesocosms at the Llyn Brianne Observatory in Llandovery, Wales, UK, to simulate near-natural river conditions.

Material degradation was assessed through tensile strength testing of both whole wipes and wipe strips, the latter sized to match standardised cotton strip bioassays also used as ecologically relevant controls. Tensile strength was measured using a Zwick/Roell Z050 testing machine with self-tightening roller grips (fixed pull rate: 20 cm/min; preload: 1 N; preload speed: 5 cm/min; initial grip separation: 11.61 cm).

The dataset includes:

• Weekly water chemistry data (e.g., pH, total dissolved solids [ppm]; pH.csv)
• Continuous environmental data (temperature, light intensity; Dataloggers_Mesocosms.csv)
• Tensile strength loss results across wipe materials (full-sized and strips) and time points (Mesocosm_Strips.csv, and Mesocosms_Intact.csv).

Data were collected over a five-week period between May and July 2024.

An R script (Chapter4BiodegradationScript2025.R) is also provided to reproduce data processing, statistical analyses, and visualisation as described in the associated manuscript submitted for publication. Analyses were conducted using RStudio (version 4.3.1).