Microplastics in the aquatic environment: Evidence for or against adverse impacts and major knowledge gaps
Open accessAbstract
There is increasing scientific and public concern over the presence of microplastics in the natural environment. We present the results of a systematic review of the literature to assess the weight of evidence for microplastics causing environmental harm. We conclude that microplastics do occur in surface water and sediments. Fragments and fibers predominate, with beads making up only a small proportion of the detected microplastic types. Concentrations detected are orders of magnitude lower than those reported to affect endpoints such as biochemistry, feeding, reproduction, growth, tissue inflammation and mortality in organisms. The evidence for microplastics acting as a vector for hydrophobic organic compounds to accumulate in organisms is also weak. The available data therefore suggest that these materials are not causing harm to the environment. There is, however, a mismatch between the particle types, size ranges, and concentrations of microplastics used in laboratory tests and those measured in the environment. Select environmental compartments have also received limited attention. There is an urgent need for studies that address this mismatch by performing high quality and more holistic monitoring studies alongside more environmentally realistic effects studies. Only then will we be able to fully characterize risks of microplastics to the environment to support the introduction of regulatory controls that can make a real positive difference to environmental quality. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:2776–2796. © 2018 SETAC Abstract Number of scientific studies identified over the past 8 yr with the word “microplastic” in the title, abstract, or keywords (extracted from the Scopus and Web of Science databases). Word clouds containing the 50 most frequently occurring words in abstracts from 2008 to 2011, from 2012 to 2014, and from 2015 to 2016 are overlaid.
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Polyester microplastic fibers are one of the most commonly reported microplastic types documented in environments.
“Polyester microplastic fibers, often sourced from synthetic textiles, are one of the most commonly reported microplastic types documented in environments (Burns & Boxall, 2018;Hernandez et al., 2017;Rebelein et al., 2021).”
From No Effect of Realistic Concentrations of Polyester Microplastic Fibers on Freshwater Zooplankton Communities (2024) · cites this paper as Burns & Boxall, 2018
The “Microplastic type and chemical characterization” section reports that fibers were the most common particle shape in the reviewed water-column and sediment samples, and that polyethylene terephthalate was among the more common polymers in water. It does not establish that polyester fibers specifically were among the most commonly reported types, because it reports polymer and shape separately. Its data also chiefly concern aquatic samples, rather than environments generally. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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“Polyester microplastic fi - bers, often sourced from synthetic textiles, are one of the most commonly reported microplastic types documented in environments (Burns & Boxall, 2018; Hernandez et al., 2017; Rebelein et al., 2021).”
Background
- Authors
- Burns, E. E., & Boxall, A. B. A.
- Affiliations
- University of York (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Boxall, Alistair B.A.
- Venue
- Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2018-11-01
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 2776-2796
- ISSN
- 0730-7268 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-8618
- OpenAlex
- W2898009306
- Cited by
- 713
- References
- 21
- Citations by year
- 2026: 65 · 2025: 77 · 2024: 94 · 2023: 98 · 2022: 126 · 2021: 107 · 2020: 91 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 2 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 3.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2019-02-04)
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Personal Care Products Council
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Microplastics and Plastic Pollution
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Environmental Toxicology and Ecotoxicology
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Pharmaceutical and Antibiotic Environmental Impacts
- Keywords
- microplastics, aquatic environment, surface water, sediment, microplastic fibers and fragments, microplastic concentration, adverse ecological effects, hydrophobic organic compounds, microplastic transport, environmental risk assessment, regulatory control, knowledge gaps
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Environmental Monitoring, Plastics, Water Pollutants, Chemical, Water Purification, Knowledge, Aquatic Organisms
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