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Particulate Plastics and Human Health
Summary
This book chapter reviews the pathways through which particulate plastics expose humans to toxic chemicals — including plastic additives and adsorbed environmental pollutants — via diet, drinking water, and inhalation. It summarizes evidence that microplastics and their associated contaminants accumulate through food chains and reach human tissues.
Particulate plastics in the environment can leach toxic additives, or chemo-concentrate toxins already present in the environment, making them bioavailable again for direct or indirect human exposure. Particulate plastics have been measured in organisms at various trophic levels, leading to the accumulation of associated contaminants, eventual biomagnification. Routes of human exposure of particulate plastics include oral uptake through drinking water and diet containing particulate plastics, inhalation of micro and nanoplastics from the atmosphere, dermal uptake of nanoplastics and the associated chemicals derived from cosmetics. Particulate plastics impact human health at various stages of the life cycle of the plastics. These life cycle stages of particulate plastics include extraction of fossil fuel feedstocks to synthesize plastics, manufacture of plastic products, utilization of plastic products by consumers, management of plastic wastes. Extraction and transport of fossil fuel feedstocks, which include crude oil and natural gas used for plastic manufacture, lead to the release of toxic substances to the air, water, and soil.