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Review of microplastics in museum specimens: An under-utilized tool to better understand the Plasticene
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A review of microplastic studies using museum collection specimens spanning 1900-2019 found that archived marine and freshwater organisms can fill knowledge gaps on historical microplastic pollution trends, with microfibers as the most common type found across all specimen types reviewed.
This study summarises the status of microplastic research in marine and freshwater specimens in natural museum collections around the world. Abundances, distributions, and types of microplastics in the archived collections are discussed. Museum collections can fill knowledge gaps on evolution of microplastic pollution before and during the Plasticene era. The specimens in these studies, ranging from plankton to vertebrates, were collected and archived between 1900 and 2019, and are dominated by specimens from marine ecosystems. All the specimens included in this review were preserved by freezing or in ethanol/formaldehyde except for specimens in one study that were preserved via cryomilling. Microfibers were the most common microplastics in the reviewed studies. We recommend more microplastic studies over a wider taxonomic range of species and across a longer span of years utilizing archival specimen collections around the world in order to establish reference points and develop temporal trends for microplastic pollution of the environment.
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Can natural history collection specimens be used as aquatic microplastic pollution bioindicators?
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Researchers explored whether preserved animal specimens from natural history museum collections could serve as historical records of microplastic pollution over time. By reviewing how such collections have been used to track other pollutants, they identified key challenges — including inconsistent sampling and specimen degradation — and proposed guidelines for using museum archives to reconstruct how microplastic contamination has changed over decades.
Microplastics in Museums: Pollution and Paleoecology
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This study investigated microplastic contamination in museum natural history collections, assessing both the pollution risk to preserved specimens and the potential for using archived samples to study historical microplastic accumulation in ecosystems.
Surrounded by microplastic, since when? Testing the feasibility of exploring past levels of plastic microfibre pollution using natural history museum collections
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Microplastic fibers were found in over half of marine sponge specimens collected more than 20 years ago and preserved in a museum collection. This retrospective finding confirms that microplastic fiber pollution in the ocean predates recent awareness, providing a historical baseline for tracking contamination over time.
Museum foraminifera archive historical marine plastic pollution
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Agglutinated foraminifera from museum collections dating back to 1911 were found to incorporate plastic-derived polymers detectable by pyrolysis-GC-MS, with elevated concentrations in post-1950 specimens reflecting the rise of mass plastic production. This establishes historical foraminifera as novel bioarchives capable of reconstructing a century-long timeline of marine plastic pollution.
Optimisation of enzymatic digestion and validation of specimen preservation methods for the analysis of ingested microplastics
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This study developed and validated an enzymatic tissue digestion method for extracting microplastics from both freshly collected and museum-archived marine specimens. The non-destructive approach opens the possibility of using long-term museum collections to trace historical changes in microplastic ingestion by marine organisms.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.