Microplastics biomonitoring in Australian urban wetlands using a common noxious fish (Gambusia holbrooki)

Microplastics in freshwater fishes: Occurrence, impacts and future perspectives

“…Moreover, a recent general review of plastic ingestion in animals suggested no evidence of bioaccumulation or biomagnification (Gouin, 2020) where MPs cross the intestinal barrier then translocate into and accumulate within tissues, respectively. It should however be noted that ingestion research to date is heavily biased towards MP accumulation in the GIT which, while inside the body, is considered external as it is continuous with the environment at the mouth and anus, though several studies have identified MP bioaccumulation within the liver, brain and muscle of freshwater fish (Abbasi et al, 2018;Batel et al, 2016;Ding et al, 2020;Su, Nan, et al, 2019). The reported mean MP incidence of 20%, a mean of four particles per individual and a general range of up to 10 pieces per individual (Gouin, 2020) is largely consistent with ingestion studies in freshwater fishes (Table 1) Thus, ingestion of MPs via resource items is a viable transfer mechanism in freshwater fish.…”

“…A general review of plastic ingestion in animals suggests that body size alone can explain as much as 42% of variations in plastics consumed by animals and that the ratio of the maximum ingestible plastic size for an animal relative to its body size is approximately 1:20 (Jâms et al, 2020). Sex has also been implicated as a possible explanation for differences in freshwater fish MP patterns (Horton et al, 2018; Su, Nan, et al, 2019), although this might be an artefact of body size, given patterns of sexual dimorphism in fish (Parker, 1992).…”

“…Within fish, translocated MPs, NPs and their associated contaminants have been recovered from regions such as the liver, muscle and brain (e.g. Abbasi et al, 2018; Batel et al, 2016; Ding et al, 2020; Su, Nan, et al, 2019), suggesting some risk of MP trophic transfer to piscivorous fauna. The MPs present in a fish at the point of capture should thus be considered a snapshot representing those currently trapped, as well as those yet to be egested or translocated.…”

Implicaciones de la exposición a microplásticos en salud humana. Revisión bibliográfica

“…Lei y colaboradores investigaron la tasa de detección de microplásticos en ciertos organismos de agua dulce, comprobando, por ejemplo, que en la especie Gambusia holbrooki la presencia de microplásticos era directamente proporcional al tamaño y peso de esta especie, y que este fenómeno parecía similar en otras especies acuáticas (peces y renacuajos) (Peters y Bratton, 2016;Hu et al, 2018). Los autores comprobaron también que el género podría jugar un papel importante en la absorción de los microplásticos, con mayor presencia de microplásticos en las hembras respecto a los machos (Su et al, 2019), aunque los resultados podrían deberse a que las hembras de este pez son más grandes en peso y en tamaño que los machos.…”

“…Del artículo: Microplastics biomonitoring in Australian urban wetlands using acommon noxiousfish (Gambusia holbrooki) (Su et al, 2019) También se ha medido la presencia de microplásticos en fuentes de agua potable, lo que representa una forma de exposición humana a estos contaminantes, en particular si las partículas de plástico pasan a través de los sistemas de filtración del tratamiento de aguas, estimándose que la exposición diaria a estas partículas podían oscilar entre 50.000 y casi 15 millones de partículas (Mason et al, 2016).…”