Estimation of the mass of microplastics ingested – A pivotal first step towards human health risk assessment

Senathirajah, Kala; Attwood, Simon; Bhagwat, Geetika; Carbery, Maddison; Wilson, Scott P.; Thavamani, Palanisami

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.124004

Cited by 462 publications

(236 citation statements)

References 87 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

167

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A recent report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) claimed that humans consume up to 5 g of plastic (one credit card) every week (∼700 mg/capita/day) from a subset of our intake media ( Figure 2 C). 101 Their estimation is above the 99th percentile of our distribution and hence, does not represent the intake of an average person. Other types of nano- and microparticles are also widely present in our diet, such as titanium dioxide and silicates.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 80%

Lifetime Accumulation of Microplastic in Children and Adults

Nor

Kooi

Diepens

et al. 2021

Environ. Sci. Technol.

318

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human exposure to microplastic is recognized as a global problem, but the uncertainty, variability, and lifetime accumulation are unresolved. We provide a probabilistic lifetime exposure model for children and adults, which accounts for intake via eight food types and inhalation, intestinal absorption, biliary excretion, and plastic-associated chemical exposure via a physiologically based pharmacokinetic submodel. The model probabilistically simulates microplastic concentrations in the gut, body tissue, and stool, the latter allowing validation against empirical data. Rescaling methods were used to ensure comparability between microplastic abundance data. Microplastic (1–5000 μm) median intake rates are 553 particles/capita/day (184 ng/capita/day) and 883 particles/capita/day (583 ng/capita/day) for children and adults, respectively. This intake can irreversibly accumulate to 8.32 × 10 3 (90% CI, 7.08 × 10 2 –1.91 × 10 6 ) particles/capita or 6.4 (90% CI, 0.1–2.31 × 10 3 ) ng/capita for children until age 18, and up to 5.01 × 10 4 (90% CI, 5.25 × 10 3 –9.33 × 10 6 ) particles/capita or 40.7 (90% CI, 0.8–9.85 × 10 3 ) ng/capita for adults until age 70 in the body tissue for 1–10 μm particles. Simulated microplastic concentrations in stool agree with empirical data. Chemical absorption from food and ingested microplastic of the nine intake media based on biphasic, reversible, and size-specific sorption kinetics, reveals that the contribution of microplastics to total chemical intake is small. The as-yet-unknown contributions of other food types are discussed in light of future research needs.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 80%

Lifetime Accumulation of Microplastic in Children and Adults

Nor

Kooi

Diepens

et al. 2021

Environ. Sci. Technol.

318

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Since they are so prevalent on our planet, it is not surprising that they have been detected in many organisms (Rebelein et al, 2021;Guzzetti et al, 2018;Egbeocha et al, 2018), including humans, in whom it is estimated that over 50% of human annual consumption of plastics is as microfibres (Cox et al, 2019). The actual consumption of microplastics by humankind is not known, but it has been estimated as 0.5-1 g/week (Senathirajah et al, 2021). Microfibres have been found in agricultural food crops (Oliveri Conti et al, 2020) and in mussels from the Belgian and Dutch coasts (Leslie et al, 2017;De Witte et al, 2014).…”

Section: Fate and Environmental Effects Of Microfibres From Textilesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plastic microfibre pollution: how important is clothes’ laundering?

Gaylarde

Baptista-Neto

Fonseca

2021

Heliyon

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Microfibres from clothes laundering are the main source of primary microplastics in oceans. Fibres are frequently the most common plastics found in aquatic animals. The main plastic in polluting microplastics is PET. Various toxic substances are incorporated in textile microfibres. Fibres contribute up to 90% total plastic mass in wastewater treatment plants. A Standard Test is required to allow the development of microfibre release control actions.

show abstract

“…Palanisami, who was not involved in the current study, recently published an analysis of MP consumption from all dietary sources in which he estimated humans could be eating up 5 g per week. 5 "This is the first systematic review of the literature on microplastics in seafood, which is important in its own right," says Dave Love, an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who also was not involved in the study. "If regulatory agencies were to inspect seafood for microplastics-which they do not currently do as part of routine testing-there would need to be expert guidance on where to set the bar or the numbers of microparticles per gram of tissue allowable.…”

Section: Science Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastics in Seafood: How Much Are People Eating?

Nicole¹

2021

Environ Health Perspect

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With discarded plastics making up more than 80% of the trash that accumulates in some locations, 1 microplastics (MPs) have become ubiquitous in the environment. Generally defined as synthetic polymers less than 5 mm in diameter, 2 MPs have been found in fish, shellfish, crustaceans, mollusks, and even mammals. 3 In a systematic review and meta-analysis recently reported in Environmental Health Perspectives, investigators estimated the level of MP contamination in seafood and, consequently, how much people may ingest each year. 3 It is not clear whether MP consumption harms human health, although particles may carry potential hazardous plastic constituents, microorganisms, and adsorbed chemicals. 3 "In order to assess whether the uptake of microplastics via food can indeed pose a risk to our health, first we need to quantify this exposure, and, second, determine whether this exposure is high enough to have a detrimental effect," says lead study author Evangelos Danopoulos, a doctoral student at Hull York Medical School in England. "Systematic reviews and meta-analyses can play a key function in the risk assessment process."The systematic review included 50 primary peer-reviewed papers-all field studies that sampled mollusks, crustaceans, fish, and echinoderms for MP contamination-and 19 studies were used in the meta-analysis. The authors developed a novel risk of bias (RoB) quality assessment tool to evaluate all aspects of experimental design, execution, and reporting for each paper. Among other inclusion criteria, studies must have sampled commercially relevant seafood species and used one of four validated procedures to assess the chemical composition of MPs.

show abstract

Estimation of the mass of microplastics ingested – A pivotal first step towards human health risk assessment

Cited by 462 publications

References 87 publications

Lifetime Accumulation of Microplastic in Children and Adults

Lifetime Accumulation of Microplastic in Children and Adults

Plastic microfibre pollution: how important is clothes’ laundering?

Microplastics in Seafood: How Much Are People Eating?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About