Microplastic-Toxic Chemical Interaction: A Review Study on Quantified Levels, Mechanism and Implication

Abstract

Current problem facing researchers globally is microplastics as well as toxic chemical pollution of the ecosystem. Microplastics carry toxic chemicals in the ecosystem.serving as a vector for transport. In this study, a review of the literature has been conducted with the following objectives: (1) to summarise the concentrations of toxic chemicals such heavy metals and hydrophobic organic contaminants sorped on microplastics; (2) to evaluate their spatial distribution regarding adsorbed contaminant (3) to discuss plausible mechanism by which microplastics adsorp or desorp toxic chemicals in the environment; (4) to discuss implications of their occurrence in air, water and soil media; and (5) to discuss the impact of ingested microplastics to human health. Microplastics are ubiquitous environmental contaminant. Concentrations of sorped toxic chemical varied with location which represents a local problem; industrialized areas (especially areas experiencing crude oil related activities or have history of crude oil pollution) have higher concentrations than less industrialized areas. Ingestion of microplastics has been demonstrated in a range of marine and soil organisms as well as edible plants, thus possible contaminating the base of the food-web. Potential health effect to human is by particle localization, chemical toxicity and microbal toxins. We conclude by highlighting the gap in knowledge and suggesting key future areas of research for scientists and policymakers.

Monitoring and modeling of heavy metal contents in vegetables collected from markets in Imo State, Nigeria

“…The current study was also lower than value of 3.68 mg/kg for local vegetables Brassica juncea in Harare, Zimbabwe, 0.090 mg/kg for T. occidentalis from Lagos Markets, Nigeria and 0.049 mg/kg for Lactuca sativa collected from vicinity of an industrial area [37][38][39]. Various sources of environmental contamination have been implicated for its presence in foods especially from irrigation water and potentially from microplastics [15,37,[40][41][42]. Cd is a non-essential element in foods and natural water and it accumulates principally in the kidneys and liver [13].…”

Microplastics Determination in the Rivers with Different Urbanisation Variances: A Case Study in Kuching City, Sarawak, Malaysia

“…Another type of plastic, which has been widely used in food packing called polystyrene (PS) was also found in the samples. The micro size PS is the debris from a larger size PS due to natural weathering (Wu et al, 2017;Wirnkor et al, 2019). From the prospect of IR analysis, this type of plastic can be characterised by determining the aromatic C=C stretching at 1601 cm −1 as well as the C-H vibration at 2838 cm -1 .…”

A review: Water pollution by heavy metal and organic pollutants: Brief review of sources, effects and progress on remediation with aquatic plants

“…Rivers serves as hotspot for organic pollutant loading, particularly those in lowland regions [74]. Organic water pollutants generally include: detergents, disinfection by-products (having "down-the-drain" applications [221]), food processing waste, insecticides and herbicides, petroleum hydrocarbons and lubricants, and fuel combustion byproducts (from storm water runoff) [75], volatile organic compounds, chlorinated solvents, perchlorate (from personal care products), drug pollution (involving pharmaceutical drugs and their metabolites). Some of these organic water pollutants contain compounds that are persistent in nature and elicited most concern from the international community regarded as persistent organic pollutants (POPs).…”

“…Some of the models have significant limitations e.g PFO and PSO models, which only considers adsorption step on the active sites and predicts the internal diffusion while ignoring the external diffusion. In the use of Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms models, assumption is made that there is a local equilibrium between the contaminated aqueous medium and contaminant, an assumption that may be misleading [221]. However, they have been widely used in absorption studies [215][216][217] and recently used in phytoremediation studies [188,205,[218][219].…”