Chemical Pollutants Sorbed to Ingested Microbeads from Personal Care Products Accumulate in Fish

Abstract

The prevalence of microplastics (<5 mm) in natural environments has become a widely recognized global problem. Microplastics have been shown to sorb chemical pollutants from their surrounding environment, thus raising concern as to their role in the movement of these pollutants through the food chain. This experiment investigated whether organic pollutants sorbed to microbeads (MBs) from personal care products were assimilated by fish following particle ingestion. Rainbow fish (Melanotaenia fluviatilis) were exposed to MBs with sorbed polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs; BDE-28, -47, -100, -99, -153, -154, -183, 200 ng g(-1); BDE-209, 2000 ng g(-1)) and sampled at 0, 21, 42, and 63 days along with two control treatments (food only and food + clean MBs). Exposed fish had significantly higher Σ8PBDE concentrations than both control treatments after just 21 days, and continued exposure resulted in increased accumulation of the pollutants over the experiment (ca. 115 pg g(-1) ww d(-1)). Lower brominated congeners showed the highest assimilation whereas higher brominated congeners did not appear to transfer, indicating they may be too strongly sorbed to the plastic or unable to be assimilated by the fish due to large molecular size or other factors. Seemingly against this trend, however, BDE-99 did not appear to bioaccumulate in the fish, which may be due to partitioning from the MBs or it being metabolized in vivo. This work provides evidence that MBs from personal care products are capable of transferring sorbed pollutants to fish that ingest them.

A 2018 Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation and Biological Diversity

“…There is now substantial action on this issue internationally, with several governments, including those of the USA and the UK, introducing legislative bans on microbeads in cosmetics and detergents, and many cosmetics companies voluntarily committing to halt their use of microplastics by 2020 [2,3]. New research on the effects of microbeads has revealed biological responses in both terrestrial and aquatic environments, with evidence demonstrating that microplastics reduce the survival and fitness of earthworms Lumbricus terrestris [4] and facilitate the accumulation of sorbed organic pollutants in fish [5]. Discussion of the use of gene editing to control invasive species or disease vectors, raised in our 2014 horizon scan [6], has increased dramatically over the past year, with a range of developments using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR).…”

Microfiber Masses Recovered from Conventional Machine Washing of New or Aged Garments

“…9,10 To date, microplastic origins are incompletely understood, but they include primary and secondary sources, with the latter including breakdown of products upstream of, or within, the environment. 3 In situ environmental fragmentation 11 is a difficult-tocontrol microplastic source because it stems from larger plastic debris continuously entering the environment.…”

Seasonal-Dial Shifts of Ichthyoplankton Assemblages and Plastic Debris around an Equatorial Atlantic Archipelago

“…Interactions of these fragments with planktonic organisms and their predators have also been reported (Lima et al, 2015Long et al, 2015;Panti et al, 2015;Cole et al, 2016). These organisms are prone to feed on available microplastics and promote the transfer of particles and sorbed pollutants throughout the trophic web (Dantas et al, 2012;Lusher et al, 2013;Rochman et al, 2013;Tanaka et al, 2013;Besseling et al, 2014;Sá et al, 2015;Ferreira et al, 2016;Lönnstedt and Eklöv, 2016;Wardrop et al, 2016).…”

“…Great attention has been given to this size class of pollutant, as a fraction much more abundant and ubiquitous in the marine environment in terms of number of items, which occurs from mangrove creeks and estuaries to remote oceanic islands (Ivar do Sul et al, 2013;Lima et al, 2014Lima et al, , 2016. These fragments are likely to be the most hazardous to marine biota owing to their small size, physical harm, blockage, starvation and chemical contamination due to organic and inorganic pollutants absorbed by the ingested microplastic (Frias et al, 2010;Turner, 2010;Cole et al, 2011;Rochman et al, 2013;Tanaka et al, 2013;Lönnstedt and Eklöv, 2016;Wardrop et al, 2016).…”