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Plastic Debris Is a Human Health Issue
Open accessAbstract
T he global threat of highly persistent plastic waste accumulating and fragmenting in the world's oceans, inland waters and terrestrial environments is becoming increasingly evident.[1][2][3] Humans are being exposed to both plastic particles and chemical additives being released from the plastic debris of consumer society.This material is fragmenting, leaching and spreading throughout the biosphere, including indoor and outdoor air, soil, and water systems.What started as a marine environmental contamination issue is in fact very much a human health issue as well.What do we know so far about the impacts of this plastic debris for humans?Humans can be exposed to plastic particles via consumption of seafood and terrestrial food products, drinking water and via the air.1,4 Uptake of plastics by humans (and animals) can cause adverse health effects by at least three possible means:
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Cited by
Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood
Leslie, H. A., van Velzen, M. J. M., Brandsma, S. H., Vethaak, A. D., Garcia-Vallejo, J. J., & Lamoree, M. H. (2022) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2022.107199 · Cited by 3,906
Self-citationAirborne microplastics: consequences to human health?
Prata, J. C. (2018) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2017.11.043 · Cited by 1,852
Carbery, M., O'Connor, W., & Palanisami, T. (2018) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2018.03.007 · Cited by 1,425
The plastic brain: neurotoxicity of micro- and nanoplastics
Prüst, M., Meijer, J., & Westerink, R. H. S. (2020) · Particle and Fibre Toxicology · doi:10.1186/s12989-020-00358-y · Cited by 811
Solid waste management: Scope and the challenge of sustainability
Das, S., Lee, S.-H., Kumar, P., Kim, K.-H., Lee, S. S., & Bhattacharya, S. S. (2019) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.04.323 · Cited by 773
Metadata
- Authors
- Vethaak, A. D., & Leslie, H. A.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2016-06-22
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 13
- Pages
- 6825-6826
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- OpenAlex
- W2471456145
- Cited by
- 381
- References
- 0
- Type
- other
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
