Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK.
Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Mar 1;810:152292. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152292. Epub 2021 Dec 9.
Discarded plastic wastes in the environment are serious challenges for sustainable waste management and for the delivery of environmental and public health. Plastics in the environment become rapidly colonised by microbial biofilm, and importantly this so-called 'plastisphere' can also support, or even enrich human pathogens. The plastisphere provides a protective environment and could facilitate the increased survival, transport and dissemination of human pathogens and thus increase the likelihood of pathogens coming into contact with humans, e.g., through direct exposure at beaches or bathing waters. However, much of our understanding about the relative risks associated with human pathogens colonising environmental plastic pollution has been inferred from taxonomic identification of pathogens in the plastisphere, or laboratory experiments on the relative behaviour of plastics colonised by human pathogens. There is, therefore, a pressing need to understand whether plastics play a greater role in promoting the survival and dispersal of human pathogens within the environment compared to other substrates (either natural materials or other pollutants). In this paper, we consider all published studies that have detected human pathogenic bacteria on the surfaces of environmental plastic pollution and critically discuss the challenges of selecting an appropriate control material for plastisphere experiments. Whilst it is clear there is no 'perfect' control material for all plastisphere studies, understanding the context-specific role plastics play compared to other substrates for transferring human pathogens through the environment is important for quantifying the potential risk that colonised plastic pollution may have for environmental and public health.
环境中废弃的塑料废物对可持续废物管理以及实现环境和公共卫生目标构成了严重挑战。环境中的塑料会迅速被微生物生物膜定植，重要的是，这种所谓的“塑料体”还可以支持甚至富集人类病原体。塑料体提供了一个保护性环境，并可以促进人类病原体的存活、传输和传播增加，从而增加病原体与人类接触的可能性，例如通过直接暴露在海滩或浴场。然而，我们对定植在环境塑料污染中的人类病原体相关风险的理解，在很大程度上是根据塑料体中病原体的分类鉴定，或者是在实验室中研究人类病原体对塑料的相对行为推断出来的。因此，迫切需要了解与其他基质（天然材料或其他污染物）相比，塑料在促进环境中人类病原体的存活和传播方面是否发挥了更大的作用。在本文中，我们考虑了所有已发表的研究，这些研究都在环境塑料污染的表面检测到了人类致病菌，并批判性地讨论了选择合适的塑料体实验对照材料的挑战。虽然对于所有的塑料体研究来说，都没有“完美”的对照材料，但了解塑料相对于其他基质在通过环境转移人类病原体方面的具体作用，对于量化定植塑料污染对环境和公共卫生可能产生的潜在风险非常重要。
