Santini Saul, De Beni Eleonora, Martellini Tania, Sarti Chiara, Randazzo Demetrio, Ciraolo Roberto, Scopetani Costanza, Cincinelli Alessandra
Department of Chemistry "Ugo Schiff", University of Florence, Via della Lastruccia 3, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Florence, Italy.
Department of Chemistry "Ugo Schiff", University of Florence and Consorzio Interuniversitario per lo Sviluppo dei Sistemi a Grande Interfase (CSGI), Via della Lastruccia 3, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Florence, Italy.
Toxics. 2022 Jul 13;10(7):391. doi: 10.3390/toxics10070391.
Among microplastics (MPs), fibers are one of the most abundant shapes encountered in the aquatic environment. Growing attention is being focused on this typology of particles since they are considered an important form of marine contamination. Information about microfibers distribution in the Mediterranean Sea is still limited and the increasing evidence of the high amount of fibers in the aquatic environment should lead to a different classification from MPs which, by definition, are composed only of synthetic materials and not natural. In the past, cellulosic fibers (natural and regenerated) have been likely included in the synthetic realm by hundreds of studies, inflating "micro-plastic" counts in both environmental matrices and organisms. Comparisons are often hampered because many of the available studies have explicitly excluded the micro-fibers (MFs) content due, for example, to methodological problems. Considering the abundance of micro-fibers in the environment, a chemical composition analysis is fundamental for toxicological assessments. Overall, the results of this review work provide the basis to monitor and mitigate the impacts of microfiber pollution on the sea ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea, which can be used to investigate other basins of the world for future risk assessment.
在微塑料（MPs）中，纤维是在水生环境中最常见的形态之一。由于它们被视为海洋污染的一种重要形式，人们对这类颗粒的关注度日益增加。关于地中海微纤维分布的信息仍然有限，而且水生环境中大量纤维的证据越来越多，这应该导致与微塑料有不同的分类，因为根据定义，微塑料仅由合成材料而非天然材料组成。过去，数百项研究可能已将纤维素纤维（天然和再生的）纳入合成领域，从而夸大了环境基质和生物体中的“微塑料”数量。由于许多现有研究因方法问题等原因明确排除了微纤维（MFs）含量，所以比较工作常常受到阻碍。考虑到环境中微纤维的丰富性，化学成分分析对于毒理学评估至关重要。总体而言，这项综述工作的结果为监测和减轻微纤维污染对地中海海洋生态系统的影响提供了依据，可用于调查世界其他海域以进行未来的风险评估。
