Microplastics in Seafood and the Implications for Human Health

By Madeleine Smith, D. Love, Chelsea M. Rochman, R. Neff. Current Environmental Health Reports, 2018

1,485 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe evidence regarding human exposure to microplastics via seafood and discuss potential health effects. Shellfish and other animals consumed whole pose particular concern for human exposure. If there is toxicity, it is likely dependent on dose, polymer type, size, surface chemistry, and hydrophobicity. Human activity has led to microplastic contamination throughout the marine environment. As a result of widespread contamination, microplastics are ingested by many species of wildlife including fish and shellfish. Because microplastics are associated with chemicals from manufacturing and that sorb from the surrounding environment, there is concern regarding physical and chemical toxicity. Evidence regarding microplastic toxicity and epidemiology is emerging. We characterize current knowledge and highlight gaps. We also recommend mitigation and adaptation strategies targeting the life cycle of microplastics and recommend future research to assess impacts of microplastics on humans. Addressing these research gaps is a critical priority due to the nutritional importance of seafood consumption.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d769aa8938b66c91c77d6689da91cfc4352b8f1b

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Citations in the corpus

• Microbial Colonization and Degradation of Microplastics in Aquatic Ecosystem: A Review (2021, background): “Microplastics were found to be moved from algae to zooplankton to goldfish in a scientific investigation by Cedervall and colleagues (Cedervall et al. 2012; Smith et al. 2018).”
• Contributions of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in microplastic pollution research: A review (2020, background): “Degradation of MPs depends on many factors including polymer type, age, and environmental conditions such as sunlight, temperature, rain, humidity, irradiation, pH, pollutants, thermal cycles, and oxygen content (Halle et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2018).”
• Plastics: Environmental and Biotechnological Perspectives on Microbial Degradation (2019, background): “Notably, MPs and NPs are a concern to our health, as it is expected that they enter the food chain and end up in our intestines (12, 13).”
• Toxicity of Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Mammalian Systems (2020, background): “Humans could accumulate MPs/NPs from different food sources [53,54] as well as drinking water [55,56].”