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Leachate from Weathered Face Masks Increases DNA Damage to Sperm of Sand Dollars Scaphechinus mirabilis
Summary
Researchers tested how chemical leachate from weathered disposable face masks affects the reproductive cells of sand dollar sea urchins. They found that leachate from masks exposed to environmental weathering for 200 days caused significantly more DNA damage to sperm than leachate from new masks. The study suggests that as pandemic-era face mask waste breaks down in coastal environments, it may release increasingly harmful chemicals that threaten marine reproductive health.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem of environmental contamination of disposable personal protective equipment, in particular face masks (FMs). As a result of environmental factors, FMs undergo aging and fragmentation processes and become a source of microplastics (MPs) and chemical additives. Taking into account the scale of accumulation of used FMs and their fragments in the coastal zone, it should be expected that the most appreciable ecotoxicological consequences should be observed in hydrobionts inhabiting coastal ecosystems. Based on this, the aim of this study was to investigate the toxicity of leachates from pristine and weathered FMs using sperm of sand dollars Scaphechinus mirabilis. In our work, we used pristine and weathered FMs, which for 200 days were kept in the external environment under natural conditions and exposed to a complex of climatic factors. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to characterize the chemical changes that occurred in the polymer structure of FMs during this period. It follows from the results obtained that leachates from pristine and weathered FMs reduced sperm viability; stimulated the accumulation of lipid peroxidation products, such as malondialdehyde (MDA); and significantly increased the destruction of DNA molecules, showing a genotoxic effect. Overall, our results complement the limited experimental data presented, indicating the genotoxic properties of face mask extracts.
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