Cellulosic and microplastic fibers in the Antarctic fish Harpagifer antarcticus and Sub-Antarctic Harpagifer bispinis

A study on textile microfiber contamination in the gastrointestinal tracts of <i>Merluccius merluccius</i> samples from the Tyrrhenian Sea

“…As the composition of 10% of total fibers has been confirmed by micro-FTIR, results and interpretations must be taken with care. However, considering the documented abundance of cellulosic microfibers in marine environments (Suaria et al ., 2020 ), the composition of the fibers in the fish gut could reflect the high distribution of these fibers in the surrounding environment (Ergas et al , 2023 ). Despite synthetic polymers have dominated the textile market during the last decades, natural/artificial cellulosic microfibers are reported as the most abundant in marine habitats, probably because these fibers are more damageable, shedding from clothes and other textiles into the environment (Liu et al ., 2023 ).…”

“…Some studies tended to include the assessment of synthetic fibers as a particular type of microplastic (Cesa et al ., 2017 ), while recent works consider textile microfibers separately from common microplastic particles due to their different origin and environmental abundance, as well as mitigation strategies (Avio et al ., 2020 ; Ergas et al ., 2023 ). This approach may prevent natural microfibers from being excluded from studies under the assumption that non-plastic fibers are readily biodegradable (Athey and Erdle, 2022 ).…”