Effect of environmentally relevant concentrations of potentially toxic microplastic on coastal copepods

Abstract

Tire wear particles (TWP) are both abundant and potentially toxic types of microplastic (MP) in the coastal ocean. We tested the effects of TWP type (new tires, old tires, rubber granules from artificial turfs) and concentration (10-10,000 TWP L − 1 ) on feeding, reproduction and fecal pellet production of two common coastal copepods at high (400 μg C L − 1 ) and low (40 μg C L − 1 ) food concentration consisting of a cryptophyte Rhodomonas sp. We did not observe any effect of TWP on copepods at environmentally relevant concentrations of <10 TWP L − 1 . At TWP concentrations that were >100 times higher than the MP concentrations measured in coastal waters, food concentration, copepod feeding mode, TWP concentration and TWP type interacted to influence copepod feeding and pellet production, while reproduction was unaffected. Our results suggest that TWP at the current measured concentrations in the ocean environment is not likely to be a threat to the common coastal copepods.

Unpalatable Plastic: Efficient Taste Discrimination of Microplastics in Planktonic Copepods

“…The current knowledge about the ingestion and effects of microplastics on copepods is largely based on bottle incubations. ,,,, Most studies use ingestion rates as the main parameter to describe microplastic consumption and selection by copepods, but this is not sufficient to reveal the underlying mechanisms. On the one hand, copepods could either selectively graze on plastic particles or indiscriminately ingest the particles with the natural prey.…”

Polystyrene and Polyethylene Microplastics Decrease Cell Viability and Dysregulate Inflammatory and Oxidative Stress Markers of MDCK and L929 Cells In Vitro

“…As synthetic human-made polymers, microplastic contamination of the environment has numerous diverse sources of origin, including car tires, effluents from clothes washers and dryers, and the slow degradation of littered cigarette butts (Belzagui et al 2021 ; Karkkainen and Sillanpaa 2020 ; Koski et al 2021 ; Mengistu et al 2021 ). Microplastics are not always byproducts, as they can be incorporated specifically for their properties into products such as coatings, cosmetics, cleaning agents, and medical applications (Zarus et al 2021 ).…”

A whale of a plastic tale: A plea for interdisciplinary studies to tackle micro- and nanoplastic pollution in the marine realm

“…concentrations of plastic that are up to 100 g l −1 or 100,000 particles l −1 for plastic leachate studies; see Delaeter et al (2022) for a review. Noticeably these concentrations are orders of magnitude higher than typical environmental concentrations, which are in the ng l −1 to μg l −1 range (Lenz et al, 2016) or 1 to 500 particles m 3 (Koski et al, 2021), and can even reach up to ca. 17 mg l −1 in the intertidal zone (Paul-Pont et al, 2018).…”

“…50 % of the studies identified in our literature survey (see Table 1), is nevertheless accessible through a range of coupled chromatographic and spectrometric methods such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography-mass-spectrometry, and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry; see e.g. Tetu et al (2019), Capolupo et al (2021, Koski et al (2021), Lehtiniemi et al (2021) and Rendell-Bhatti et al (2021) for recent examples; (v) Know your dose. This is probably the most challenging component of the present roadmap as the relevance of any biological assay relies on the use of environmentally realistic amounts of particles and/or chemicals (Lenz et al, 2016;Delaeter et al, 2022), which are typically highly variable in time and space.…”