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The effect of microplastics on terrestrial and aquatic organisms.
Summary
Scientists tested how tiny plastic particles (microplastics) affect soil creatures like earthworms and water-dwelling organisms like amphipods. They found that high levels of microplastics reduced reproduction in earthworms and other soil critters, and that plastic particles could pass from plants to the animals that eat them, though only in small amounts. This matters because it shows microplastics can move up the food chain, raising questions about how much of this pollution might eventually make its way into the food humans eat, too.
Microplastics (<5 mm) are one of the growing anthropogenic litters in marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments.However, there is a scarcity of information on the impact of microplastics to soil and freshwater organisms.The present work studied the potential risks of the microplastic polyethylene at concentrations up to 10 % to the standard soil invertebrate species Eisenia andrei, Folsomia candida and Enchytraeus crypticus and the effect of polyethylene and polystyrene at concentrations 0.37 mg/mL and 0.0005 mg/mL, respectively on the freshwater duckweed Lemna minor and the amphipod Gammarus pulex through trophic transfer of microplastics from duckweed pre-exposed to the microplastics in laboratory conditions.The reproduction of E. andrei and E. crypticus significantly decreased and no other effects were detected in the soil organisms after their exposure to microplastics.Data suggested that earthworms and enchytraeids might have allocated energy into keeping biomass in order to improve resistance against MPs, conditioning by this way its reproduction.No negative effects of microplastics were detected on growth and photosynthetic performance of duckweed L.minor after 7 days of exposure.The trophic transfer experiment did not show consistent accumulation of microplastics in gut of amphipods, however small amounts of microplastic particles were transferred from the duckweed to the amphipods suggesting that, although at low level, microplastics can be transferred from plants to animals.