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Reflection on the utilization of microplastics as experiment material in laboratory
Summary
This perspective paper analyzed 204 microplastics toxicology studies and found significant mismatches between the types of microplastics used as experimental materials and those actually found in the environment. The authors argue that using ecologically unrealistic plastic types and concentrations in lab experiments limits the ability to draw meaningful conclusions about real-world risks.
Abstract More and more researches about microplastics (MPs) have been emerging, as the environmental MPs are detected ubiquitously. Various kinds of MPs have been added heavily as exogenous pollution in toxicological experiments. This perspective is intended to figure out utilization situation of MPs in laboratory and discrepancies between the choice of experiment material and environmental composition of MPs. Here we show, the total number of MPs utilized in 204 articles could be equivalent to that contained in 1015 kg dry wastewater treatment sludge, or comparable to the total existing mass in 600 km− 2 South Pacific subtropical gyre. This means that laboratory could be becoming a potential hotspot of MPs pollution as there is no criterion aiming at treatment of MPs-rich experiment waste. In addition, commercial Polystyrene (PS) microsphere with size less 1 µm was one popular experiment material, which is inconsistent with predominant composition of environmental MPs. That probably overestimate the adverse outcome of MPs as these purchased plastic sphere lack representativeness for actual environmental MPs. This work would shed light on the control and calibration of choice of MPs material in the future research.