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Accumulation of Plastic Debris and Associated Contaminants in Aquatic Food Webs
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Researchers built a food web model simulating microplastic and chemical contaminant transfer through an Arctic marine food chain from zooplankton to polar bears. The model found that while microplastics themselves do not biomagnify substantially through trophic levels, they can alter the bioaccumulation patterns of hydrophobic organic chemicals depending on the chemical properties and organism physiology.
We present a generic theoretical model (MICROWEB) that simulates the transfer of microplastics and hydrophobic organic chemicals (HOC) in food webs. We implemented the model for an Arctic case comprised of nine species including Atlantic cod and polar bear as top predator. We used the model to examine the effect of plastic ingestion on trophic transfer of microplastics and persistent HOCs (PCBs) and metabolizable HOCs (PAHs), spanning a wide range of hydrophobicities. In a scenario where HOCs in plastic and water are in equilibrium, PCBs biomagnify less when more microplastic is ingested, because PCBs biomagnify less well from ingested plastic than from regular food. In contrast, PAHs biomagnify more when more microplastic is ingested, because plastic reduces the fraction of PAHs available for metabolization. We also explore nonequilibrium scenarios representative of additives that are leaching out, as well as sorbing HOCs, quantitatively showing how the above trends are strengthened and weakened, respectively. The observed patterns were not very sensitive to modifications in the structure of the food web. The model can be used as a tool to assess prospective risks of exposure to microplastics and complex HOC mixtures for any food web, including those with relevance for human health.
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A food web model (MICROWEB) was developed to simulate how microplastics and hydrophobic organic chemicals transfer through Arctic marine food webs from zooplankton to polar bears. The model showed that increased microplastic ingestion can paradoxically reduce PCB biomagnification by diluting contaminant concentrations, while PAH transfer is less affected.
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