Harmful Effects of Plastics, Microplastics, and Nanoplastics

Plastics were invented to replace the existing source of natural reserves of metals and because of their advantageous properties such as flexibility, light weight, compressibility, ease of portability, low cost, and moldability. However, in subsequent years, it was observed that these plastics are becoming a major threat to the environment. The reason for their threat is the disposal of plastics as waste after their usage in electronics, food packaging, transportation, clothing, sanitary purposes, gift wrappers, birthday decorations, and toy materials. In the present article, plastics, microplastics, and nanoplastics and their harmful effects are discussed. Plastics that are further degraded by various agents, such as microorganisms or ultraviolet radiation, may produce microplastics, while further degradation produces nanoplastics. Although plastics may not affect the health of organisms, microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) affect the nature, and in turn, destroy the health of living organisms. Therefore, the use of plastics to produce nanoplastics and microplastics should be minimized. In this chapter, the generation of MPs and NPs is discussed, together with the techniques for MP and NP measurement. Various processes for the degradation of plastics are briefly discussed. As MPs and NPs are potential threats to the environment, their harmful effects of MPs and NPs have been discussed.