Microplastics in the Marine Environment: Distribution, Interactions and Effects

By A. Lusher. 2015

636 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Microplastics are an emerging marine pollutant. It is important to understand their distribution in the marine environment and their implications on marine habitats and marine biota. Microplastics have been found in almost every marine habitat around the world, with plastic composition and environmental conditions significantly affecting their distribution. Marine biota interact with microplastics including birds, fish, turtles, mammals and invertebrates. The biological repercussions depend on to the size of microplastics encountered, with smaller sizes having greater effects on organisms at the cellular level. In the micrometre range plastics are readily ingested and egested, whereas nanometre-sized plastics can pass through cell membranes. Despite concerns raised by ingestion, the effects of microplastic ingestion in natural populations and the implications for food webs are not understood. Without knowledge of retention and egestion rates of field populations, it is difficult to deduce ecological consequences. There is evidence to suggest that microplastics enter food chains and there is trophic transfer between predators and prey. What is clear is that further research on a variety of marine organisms is required to understand the environmental implications of microplastics in more detail and to establish effects in natural populations.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6a78d45d664f98ffb6b039bd6d7f21ce02a274d9

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomaterials

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In Pollution

Citations in the corpus

Trophic Transfer of Microplastics From Copepods to Jellyfish in the Marine Environment (2020, background): “Keywords: behavior, ephyrae, immobility, ingestion, polyethylene, zooplankton INTRODUCTION Microplastics (MPs, <5 mm, Arthur et al., 2009) are bioavailable to marine organisms, through direct or indirect ingestion by trophic transfer from contaminated prey (Lusher, 2015; Nelms et al., 2018).”
Assessment of microplastics in freshwater systems: A review. (2019, background): “The impacts plastics on aquatic life are influenced by the size of the debris: large plastic debris, such as discarded fishing lines and nets, often cause entanglement among invertebrates, birds, mammals and turtles (Gall and Thompson, 2015; A. Lusher, 2015).”
Modeling the Role of Microplastics in Bioaccumulation of Organic Chemicals to Marine Aquatic Organisms. A Critical Review (2015, background): “…particles, such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) or additives, residual monomers or oligomers of the component molecules of the plastics (hereafter referred to as ‘additives’) (Gouin et al. 2011; Teuten et al. 2007, 2009; Hammer et al. 2012; Browne et al. 2013; Rochman 2015; Lusher 2015).”
Microplastics in fisheries and aquaculture (2017, methodology): “This discrepancy presents a problem when comparing between studies as it is not possible to compare the results directly (Lusher, 2015).”
Microplastics in the Antarctic marine system: An emerging area of research. (2017, neutral): “…quantities of microplastics are already present in the global marine ecosystem (Liebezeit and Dubaish, 2012; Collignon et al., 2012; Desforges et al., 2014), from the tropics to the poles, including in Arctic sea ice (Obbard et al., 2014; Lusher, 2015, Bergmann et al., 2017; Tekman et al., 2017).”
Microplastics in seafood: Benchmark protocol for their extraction and characterization. (2016, background): “Indeed, the relatively low percentage of animals 99 exhibiting plastics in their tissue reported so far in the literature (Lusher, 2015) implies that a high 100”
Feasting on microplastics: ingestion by and effects on marine organisms (2018, background): “Consequently, a large number of filter feeding organisms such as copepods, bivalves, fish and whales could actively target, or passively ingest, microplastics floating in surrounding waters (Lusher 2015).”
Understanding How Microplastics Affect Marine Biota on the Cellular Level Is Important for Assessing Ecosystem Function: A Review (2019, background): “Smaller particles ( 100 nm) may have greater consequences upon ingestion, because they may end up in the tissues or even inside the cells (Lusher 2015).”