Microplastics and nanoplastics in food, water, and beverages; part I. occurrence

In recent years, the presence of microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) has been assessed in several environmental matrices, including the marine environment and agricultural soil, suggesting those pol-lutants are likely to enter the food web. However, there is still a severe lack of information about the occurrence of plastic particles in our food, partially due to the multidimensionality of the data necessary to fully describe MP contamination and the consequent difficulty in validating analytical methods.In this review, consisting of two parts, preliminary results about the presence of MPs in food, water, and beverages are summarized (Part I) and several approaches for the characterization of micro-and nano-sized plastic particles are reported and discussed (Part II).The information gathered in this manuscript highlights the need for a more comprehensive knowledge of MP/NP occurrence along the food chain in order to assess the food safety risk related to those con-taminants and implement strategies for their monitoring in products intended for human consumption. Therefore, an outlook of the field towards a coherent, consistent, and policy-relevant data collection and standardization is included in this review.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

In recent years, the presence of microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) has been assessed in various environmental matrices, indicating the potential entry of these pollutants into the food web. However, there is a lack of information about plastic particles in our food, partly due to the complexity of data and difficulties in validating analytical methods. This review summarizes preliminary results on the presence of MPs in food, water, and beverages (Part I) and discusses different approaches for characterizing micro- and nano-sized plastic particles (Part II). It emphasizes the need for comprehensive knowledge of MP/NP occurrence along the food chain to assess food safety risks and implement monitoring strategies.