A Global Perspective on Microplastics

By R. Hale, M. Seeley, M. L. Guardia, Lei Mai, E. Zeng. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans, 2020

885 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Society has become increasingly reliant on plastics since commercial production began in about 1950. Their versatility, stability, light weight, and low production costs have fueled global demand. Most plastics are initially used and discarded on land. Nonetheless, the amount of microplastics in some oceanic compartments is predicted to double by 2030. To solve this global problem, we must understand plastic composition, physical forms, uses, transport, and fragmentation into microplastics (and nanoplastics). Plastic debris/microplastics arise from land disposal, wastewater treatment, tire wear, paint failure, textile washing, and at ‐ sea losses. Riverine and atmospheric transport, storm water, and disasters facilitate releases. In surface waters plastics/microplastics weather, biofoul, aggregate, and sink, are ingested by organisms and redistributed by currents. Ocean sediments are likely the ultimate destination. Plastics release additives, concentrate environmental contaminants, and serve as substrates for bio ﬁ lms, including exotic and pathogenic species. Microplastic abundance increases as fragment size decreases, as does the proportion of organisms capable of ingesting them. Particles <20 μ m may penetrate cell membranes, exacerbating risks. Exposure can compromise feeding, metabolic processes, reproduction, and behavior. But more investigation is required to draw de ﬁ nitive conclusions. Human ingestion of contaminated seafood and water is a concern. Microplastics indoors present yet uncharacterized risks, magni ﬁ ed by the time we spend inside (>90%) and the abundance of polymeric products therein. Scienti ﬁ c challenges include improving microplastic sampling and characterization approaches, understanding long ‐ term behavior, additive bioavailability, and organismal and ecosystem health risks. Solutions include improving globally based pollution prevention, developing degradable polymers and additives, and reducing consumption/expanding plastic reuse.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/069fadf045972830978f88f275c5e96420d529ca

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Citations in the corpus

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris (2020, background): “…growing attention onmarine plastic debris by scientists and the public alike, there has been a plethora of scientific reviews in the last few years (e.g. Andrady 2011, Law 2017, Zhang 2017, Hardesty et al 2017a, Kane and Clare 2019, Maximenko et al 2019, Amaral-Zettler et al 2020, Hale et al 2020).”
Advances in barrier coatings and film technologies for achieving sustainable packaging of food products – A review (2021, background): “The lack of recycling of the single-use plastics and their non-biodegradable characteristics facilitates these plastics to enter aquatic ecosystems, which have raised wildlife mortalities from ingestion and entanglement (Hale et al., 2020).”