Synthetic microfibers: Pollution toxicity and remediation

The ever-increasing use of domestic washing machine by urban population is playing a major role in synthetic microfibers (SMFs) pollution via entering the ecosystem. Although many of the sources of fragmented plastic pollution in oceanic environments have been well known, urban areas are playing a major contributor due to huge populations. Thousands of scientific investigations are now reporting the adverse effect of these micro pollutants on aquatic and terrestrial environment, food chain and human health. Microfiber particles along with washing machine grey waters are emitted into urban drainage adjoining the lakes and river which ultimately mix in ocean water and after emission these tiny particles dispersed though out the ocean water by currents due to their low density. Environmental pollution cause by domestic laundering processes of synthetic clothes has been reported as the major cause of primary microplastics in the marine system. While community awareness and improved education will be successful in making public conscious of this problem, there needs to be more research on global scale to mitigate the ecological consequences of microfiber pollution by urban habitats through environmental friendly approach. This paper focuses to improve the understanding of urban population influence on microfiber pollution, their ecological toxicity to aquatic organism and humans, detection and characterization techniques with an emphasis on future research for prevention and control of microfiber pollution. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.