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Beyond harm: synthesising meta-analytical and mechanistic evidence on animal responses to microplastics
Summary
This review pulls together results from 14 existing studies to get a bigger-picture view of how microplastics affect animals, looking at things like growth, reproduction, and behavior across many species. The takeaway: microplastics generally cause measurable harm to animals, though the severity varies depending on the species and the type of biological function being studied. Since these animals often share biology with humans and sit in our food chain (think fish and shellfish), this kind of harm is an early warning sign worth paying attention to, even though it doesn't directly prove the same effects happen in people.
This dataset contains the data associated with the Review article “Beyond harm: synthesising meta-analytical and mechanistic evidence on animal responses to microplastics”. Data were compiled from 14 published meta-analyses examining biological responses to microplastic exposure across animal taxa. The dataset includes extracted effect sizes and associated information used to synthesise responses across biological trait categories and taxonomic groups. Effect-size metrics include Hedges’ g, log response ratios (lnRR), and odds ratios (OR), as reported in the source meta-analyses.