Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan.
Department of Cosmeceutics, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan.
Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Mar 3;21(5):1727. doi: 10.3390/ijms21051727.
Plastic products are inexpensive, convenient, and are have many applications in daily life. We overuse plastic-related products and ineffectively recycle plastic that is difficult to degrade. Plastic debris can be fragmented into smaller pieces by many physical and chemical processes. Plastic debris that is fragmented into microplastics or nanoplastics has unclear effects on organismal systems. Recently, this debris was shown to affect biota and to be gradually spreading through the food chain. In addition, studies have indicated that workers in plastic-related industries develop many kinds of cancer because of chronic exposure to high levels of airborne microplastics. Microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere now, contaminating our water, air, and food chain. In this review, we introduce a classification of plastic polymers, define microplastics and nanoplastics, identify plastics that contaminate food, describe the damage and diseases caused by microplastics and nanoplastics, and the molecular and cellular mechanisms of this damage and disease as well as solutions for their amelioration. Thus, we expect to contribute to the understanding of the effects of microplastics and nanoplastics on cellular and molecular mechanisms and the ways that the uptake of microplastics and nanoplastics are potentially dangerous to our biota. After understanding the issues, we can focus on how to handle the problems caused by plastic overuse.
塑料制品价格低廉、使用方便，在日常生活中有广泛的应用。我们过度使用与塑料相关的产品，而且无法有效地回收那些难以降解的塑料。塑料碎片会通过许多物理和化学过程被破碎成更小的碎片。破碎成微塑料或纳米塑料的塑料碎片对生物系统的影响尚不清楚。最近，这种碎片被证明会影响生物群，并通过食物链逐渐扩散。此外，研究表明，由于长期接触高水平的空气传播微塑料，与塑料相关行业的工人会患上多种癌症。微塑料和纳米塑料现在无处不在，污染我们的水、空气和食物链。在这篇综述中，我们介绍了塑料聚合物的分类，定义了微塑料和纳米塑料，确定了污染食物的塑料，描述了微塑料和纳米塑料造成的损害和疾病，以及这种损害和疾病的分子和细胞机制，以及改善它们的方法。因此，我们希望有助于理解微塑料和纳米塑料对细胞和分子机制的影响，以及微塑料和纳米塑料的摄入对我们生物群的潜在危险。在了解了这些问题之后，我们可以专注于如何处理塑料过度使用造成的问题。
