POLARIS Reaserch Center, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, Ispra, Italy.
J Appl Toxicol. 2022 Dec;42(12):2030-2044. doi: 10.1002/jat.4372. Epub 2022 Aug 30.
Microplastics (MPs) represent a worldwide emerging relevant concern toward human and environmental health due to their intentional or unintentional release. Human exposure to MPs by inhalation is predicted to be among the most hazardous. MPs include both engineered, or primary MPs, and secondary MPs, materials obtained by fragmentation from any plastic good. The major part of the environmental MPs is constituted by the second ones that are irregular in size, shape and composition. These features make the study of the biological impact of heterogenous MPs of extremely high relevance to better estimate the real toxicological hazards of these materials on human and environmental organisms. The smallest fractions of plastic granules, relying on the micron-sized scale, can be considered as the most abundant component of the environmental MPs, and for this reason, they are typically used to perform toxicity tests using in vitro systems representative of an inhalation exposure scenario. In the present work, MPs obtained from industrial treatment of waste plastics (wMPs < 50 μm) were investigated, and after the physico-chemical characterization, the cytotoxic, inflammatory and genotoxic responses, as well as the modality of wMPs interactions with alveolar lung cells, were determined. Obtained results indicated that, at high concentrations (100 μg/ml) and prolonged exposure time (48 h), wMPs affect biological responses by inducing inflammation and genotoxicity, as a result of the cell-wMP interactions, also including the uptake of the smaller particles.
微塑料（MPs）由于其有意或无意的释放，代表了一个对人类和环境健康具有全球意义的新兴问题。人类通过吸入暴露于 MPs 预计是最危险的途径之一。 MPs 包括工程 MPs 或原发性 MPs 和次级 MPs，后者是从任何塑料制品中通过破碎获得的材料。环境 MPs 的主要部分由不规则尺寸、形状和组成的次级 MPs 构成。这些特征使得研究异质 MPs 的生物影响具有极高的相关性，以便更好地估计这些材料对人类和环境生物的实际毒理学危害。依赖于微米级尺度的塑料颗粒的最小部分可以被认为是环境 MPs 中最丰富的成分，因此，它们通常用于使用体外系统进行毒性测试，以模拟吸入暴露的情况。在本工作中，研究了从工业处理废塑料中获得的 MPs（wMPs<50μm），并在进行物理化学特性分析后，确定了细胞毒性、炎症和遗传毒性反应，以及 wMPs 与肺泡肺细胞相互作用的模式。结果表明，在高浓度（100μg/ml）和延长暴露时间（48h）下，wMPs 通过诱导炎症和遗传毒性来影响生物反应，这是细胞-wMP 相互作用的结果，还包括较小颗粒的摄取。
