Journal
ECOTOXICOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY
Volume 208, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111665
Keywords
Environmental microplastics; Leachates; Early life stages; Aquatic organisms; Toxicity
Categories
Funding
- National Funding Agency [ANR-15-JOCE-0002-01]
- Spanish Government (MINECO) [PCIN-2015-187-C03-03, CTM2016-77945C3]
- Grant Program of Consolidation and structuring of competitive research groups in the University system of Galicia by the Galician Government [ED431C 2017/46]
- Italian Government [2017WERYZP]
- University of Bordeaux (IdEx)
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) [ANR-15-JOCE-0002] Funding Source: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Research on microplastics collected from two beaches in the Guadeloupe archipelago revealed different contamination profiles and toxicities. These microplastics induced sublethal effects on marine organisms, with samples from Petit-Bourg site showing more marked toxic effects.
Microplastics are ubiquitous in aquatic ecosystems, but little information is currently available on the dangers and risks to living organisms. In order to assess the ecotoxicity of environmental microplastics (MPs), samples were collected from the beaches of two islands in the Guadeloupe archipelago, Petit-Bourg (PB) located on the main island of Guadeloupe and Marie-Galante (MG) on the second island of the archipelago. These samples have a similar polymer composition with mainly polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). However, these two samples are very dissimilar with regard to their contamination profile and their toxicity. MPs from MG contain more lead, cadmium and organochlorine compounds while those from PB have higher levels of copper, zinc and hydrocarbons. The leachates of these two samples of MPs induced sublethal effects on the growth of sea urchins and on the pulsation frequency of jellyfish ephyrae but not on the development of zebrafish embryos. The toxic effects are much more marked for samples from the PB site than those from the MG site. This work demonstrates that MPs can contain high levels of potentially bioavailable toxic substances that may represent a significant ecotoxicological risk, particularly for the early life stages of aquatic animals.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available