Microplastics in Museums: Pollution and Paleoecology

Background: With the advent of the creation, production, and continuous use of plastic in both industrial and domestic spaces, plastic materials have become an integral part of human daily life, resulting in a range of impacts, both positive and negative. More recently, their resistance and refractoriness, once considered significant advantages, are now understood as a threat to the balance of ecosystems and, ultimately, to human health. The particular composition of plastic grants it great malleability and durability. On the other hand, it includes a series of potentially toxic compounds that, over time and through environmental action, can become bioavailable at various levels of the trophic chain through tiny particles known as microplastics. Research has increasingly revealed various types of damage across multiple sectors of the environment and society. Objectives: This article attempts to find out the impact of microplastics on the atmospheric layer and the consequences for historical heritage as a result of interactions in the indoor environment. Methods: The sources, types, migration mechanisms, and impacts of environmental MPs and heritage items are analysed and summarized, and it is also considered how the presence of these small particles in preserved organisms and tissues in museums and other collections can serve as indicators of the mechanisms and environmental dynamics of the Anthropocene. Results: Microplastics have been detected in the atmosphere and artefacts in natural history and other collections, as well as sediment cores, leading to the conclusion that the plasticene era began in the 1950s. Such research studies, and potential similar investigations on historical stored tissue samples, require optimization before the information stored in these sources can be fully mined. Conclusion: Microplastics are present at high levels in both outdoor and indoor air. Together with their adsorbed pollutants they can cause deterioration of the artefacts and health problems for conservators in museums. In museum specimens like preserved animals and in stored tissue collections they can act as historical proof of the distribution of microplastics in living things throughout time and this has confirmed the beginning of the Plasticene as the early 1950s.