College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences, College of Quality and Safety Engineering, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310018, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Dec 20;853:158560. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158560. Epub 2022 Sep 7.
Plastics contamination in the environment is a major concern. Risk assessment of micro- and nanoplastics (MPL and NPL) poses significant challenges due to MPL and NPL heterogeneity regarding compositional polymers, particle sizes and morphologies in the environment. Yet, there exists considerable toxicological literature on commercial polystyrene (PS) micro- and nanospheres. Although such particles do not directly represent the environmental MPL and NPL, their toxicity data should be used to advance the hazard assessment of plastics. Here, toxicity data of PS micro- and nanospheres for microorganisms, aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, fish, and higher plants was collected and analyzed. The evaluation of 294 papers revealed that aquatic invertebrates were the most studied organisms, nanosized PS was studied more often than microsized PS, acute exposures prevailed over chronic exposures, the toxicity of PS suspension additives was rarely addressed, and ∼40 % of data indicated no organismal effects of PS. Toxicity mechanisms were mainly studied in fish and nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, providing guidance for relevant studies in higher organisms. Future studies should focus on environmentally relevant plastics concentrations, wide range of organisms, co-exposures with other pollutants, and method development for plastics identification and quantification to fill the gap of bioaccumulation assessment of plastics.
环境中的塑料污染是一个主要关注点。由于微塑料和纳米塑料（MPL 和 NPL）在环境中的组成聚合物、颗粒大小和形态方面存在异质性，因此对其进行风险评估具有重大挑战。然而，关于商业聚苯乙烯（PS）微球和纳球的毒理学文献相当丰富。尽管这些颗粒不能直接代表环境中的 MPL 和 NPL，但它们的毒性数据应被用于推进塑料危害评估。在这里，我们收集和分析了 PS 微球和纳球对微生物、水生和陆生无脊椎动物、鱼类和高等植物的毒性数据。对 294 篇论文的评估表明，水生无脊椎动物是研究最多的生物体，纳米 PS 的研究比微 PS 更为频繁，急性暴露比慢性暴露更为普遍，PS 悬浮添加剂的毒性很少被涉及，并且大约 40%的数据表明 PS 对生物体没有影响。毒性机制主要在鱼类和线虫秀丽隐杆线虫中进行了研究，为相关研究在高等生物中提供了指导。未来的研究应侧重于环境相关的塑料浓度、广泛的生物体、与其他污染物的共同暴露，以及用于塑料识别和定量的方法开发，以填补塑料生物累积评估的空白。
