Journal
JOURNAL OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
Volume 439, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129686
Keywords
Aging; Biodegradable plastics; Biofilm; Microbial community; Secondary microplastic
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41766003]
- Natural Science Foundation of Hainan Province, China [2019RC043]
- Hainan Postgraduate Innova- tion Research Project [Qhys2021-12]
- Hainan University [kyqd (zr) 1719]
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Biodegradable plastics release a large amount of secondary microplastics during long-term UV aging, and the formation of biofilms on their surfaces is also observed. These microplastics exhibit high levels of abundance and genes related to human pathogens and diseases are detected on their surfaces.
Recently, biodegradable plastics (BPs) as an alternative of conventional plastics have been widely advocated and applied. However, there is still a large research gap between the formation of secondary microplastics (MPs) and colonized microorganisms on their surface under long-term aging in different environments. In this study, the generation of secondary MPs and the formation of surface biofilms on the micro-sized (3-5 mm) biodegradable plastic poly (butyleneadipate-co-terephthalate) (BP-PBAT) and conventional plastic polyvinyl chloride (CP-PVC) under long-term UV aging was investigated. The results showed that hundreds and even thousands of MPs (185.53 +/- 85.73 items/g -1473.27 +/- 143.67 items/g) were generated by BP-PBAT and CP-PVC after aged for 90 days, and the abundance of MPs produced by BP-PBAT was significantly higher than that of CP-PVC. Moreover, the alpha diversities and detected OTU number of biofilm communities formed on MPs increased with MPs-aging. The genes related to the formation of biofilms was significantly expressed on aged MPs and the genes related to human pathogens and diseases were also detected in enriching on MPs surface. Overall, BPs may lead to greater ecological risks as it releases thousands of secondary MPs after being aged, and their environmental behavior needs to be further explored.
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