Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark.
Environ Toxicol Chem. 2015 May;34(5):945-53. doi: 10.1002/etc.2914.
Plastic litter is an environmental problem of great concern. Despite the magnitude of the plastic pollution in our water bodies, only limited scientific understanding is available about the risk to the environment, particularly for microplastics. The apparent magnitude of the problem calls for quickly developing sound scientific guidance on the ecological risks of microplastics. The authors suggest that future research into microplastics risks should be guided by lessons learned from the more advanced and better understood areas of (eco) toxicology of engineered nanoparticles and mixture toxicity. Relevant examples of advances in these two fields are provided to help accelerate the scientific learning curve within the relatively unexplored area of microplastics risk assessment. Finally, the authors advocate an expansion of the "vector effect" hypothesis with regard to microplastics risk to help focus research of microplastics environmental risk at different levels of biological and environmental organization.
塑料垃圾是一个备受关注的环境问题。尽管我们的水体中存在大量的塑料污染，但对于环境的风险，特别是对于微塑料，科学界的了解还很有限。这个问题的明显规模要求迅速制定有关微塑料生态风险的合理科学指导。作者建议，未来对微塑料风险的研究应借鉴工程纳米粒子和混合物毒性（生态）毒理学等更先进和更成熟领域的经验教训。提供了这两个领域相关进展的实例，以帮助加速相对未知的微塑料风险评估科学学习曲线。最后，作者主张扩大微塑料风险的“载体效应”假说，以帮助将微塑料环境风险的研究集中在不同层次的生物和环境组织上。
