Ecotoxicity of Petrogenic Plastic Particles in Fish: Implication for Human Health and Environmental Risk Assessment

Petrogenic plastics might fragment within the ecosystems into progressively smaller fragments classified by size as “macroplastics”, “mesoplastics”, “microplastics”, and “nanoplastics”. Petrogenic micro and nano plastics (MNPs) are ubiquitous in the ecosystems and form as a result of the ageing or the action of prevailing bio-environmental factors on the plastic materials or direct release of MNPs in the environment. Fish and other aquatic organisms may ingest MNPs from their polluted environment. This review aims to explore the multifaceted interactions between MNPs, other pollutants, and the potential threats to human health. MNPs can translocate from the digestive tract to the kidney, liver, and other body tissues, causing several toxicological effects in fish and other organisms in the food chain. MNPs can induce hepatic and renal toxicity, causing the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), as well as carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic potentials in organisms. MNPs can also act as channels via which contaminants and pollutants such as heavy metals, endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organophosphate and organochlorine pesticides, etc, might pass to the organisms from different environmental media to organisms in their environment. The ingestion of fish and other contaminated aquatic bio-resources might affect human health via cancer or non-cancer risk effects. MNPs can also impact negatively on the human genetic makeup, inhibit cell viability, induce inflammatory responses, and cause minor morphological alterations. Different equipment is used to detect and characterize MNPs from the environmental matrix.