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Plastic Not-So-Fantastic: A One Health Approach to a Growing Crisis
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This One Health perspective reviews how microplastics affect environmental, animal, and human health, synthesizing evidence that these particles disrupt ecosystems and accumulate in tissues across species, underscoring the need for an integrated response.
The threat of microplastics has recently taken the media by storm, causing panic in the general public, and a drive to push research forward within the scientific community. Plastic pollution has been a growing issue ever since its invention in the early 1900s. Microplastics are small plastic particles that come about as a result of building materials, beauty products, or by shedding off larger pieces of plastic. These particles have had a profound impact on our environment, as well as the animals in it. Microplastics can be found in soil, crops and in the sea. They have been found in both domestic and wild animals. Recent studies have even found them in several different human tissues. This issue seems to be impacting all areas of life on earth, and yet a fully unified approach that benefits humans, animals and the environment, is yet to be considered. A One Health approach may be the key to curbing this problem, to try and ensure a more sustainable future.
More Papers Like This
A review on effects of microplastics on animal, environment and human health considering One Health perspective
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This review examines the effects of microplastics on animal, environmental, and human health from a One Health perspective, highlighting how microplastic contamination interconnects ecological, animal, and human health systems.
Invisible Contamination: a One Health Perspective on Micro and Nanoplastics
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This systematic review takes a One Health approach to examine how micro- and nanoplastics affect humans, animals, and the environment as interconnected systems. The research shows that plastics accumulate across food chains and can cause toxic effects in multiple species, including humans. The One Health perspective is important because it recognizes that microplastic pollution in the environment inevitably becomes a human health problem.
A One Health perspective of the impacts of microplastics on animal, human and environmental health
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This review takes a "One Health" approach to microplastics, examining how they affect animal health, human health, and the environment as interconnected systems. The authors caution that many lab studies use microplastic concentrations far higher than what is found in nature, making their results hard to apply to real-world risk. However, they note that microplastics can indirectly affect human health by disrupting ecosystems and soil processes that support food production and clean water.
The ocean and microplastics: a One Health approach
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This paper examines ocean microplastic pollution through a One Health framework, connecting marine ecosystem contamination to animal and human health impacts by tracing microplastic pathways from ocean sources through food webs to human exposure. The approach integrates ecological, veterinary, and public health perspectives to argue for a unified response to microplastic pollution as a cross-cutting environmental health challenge.
Microplastics as Emerging One Health Threats: A Molecular and Ecotoxicological Review Across Aquatic Life with Emphasis on Fish
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This review pulls together existing research showing that tiny plastic particles polluting our water can seriously harm fish, damaging their organs, disrupting hormones, and even carrying toxic hitchhikers like heavy metals and pesticides deeper into their bodies. Since these contaminated fish end up in the food we eat, and microplastics are also found in our water, air, and soil, this pollution likely affects human health too — though more research is needed to fully understand the risks. The authors argue we need coordinated global action treating animal, environmental, and human health as connected (called "One Health") to tackle this growing problem.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.