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Environmental Processes and Toxicological Effects of Micro- and Nanoplastics in Aquatic Environments

A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Emerging Contaminants".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2024) | Viewed by 907

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Interests: emerging contaminants; detection techniques; pollution remediation; environmental behavior; toxicological impacts

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Guest Editor
Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Interests: emerging contaminants; soil metabolomics; environmental behavior

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
Interests: emerging contaminants; aquatic environments; environmental behavior; ecotoxicology; phytoremediation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to discuss the environmental processes of micro- and nanoplastics in aquatic environments and to emphasize their toxicological effects induced in animals or plants. As an emerging contaminant, the environmental behavior and biotoxicity of micro- and nanoplastics have received extensive attention from the scientific community. After entering the aquatic environment, the surface physicochemical properties of plastic particles may be altered and influence their environmental fate, such as sedimentation and resuspension, adsorption and desorption of contaminants, release of additives, aging and degradation, and biological uptake and translocation. More importantly, once micro- and nanoplastics are ingested by organisms, they can be assimilated, translocated, and stored in cell tissues. This inevitably induces toxicological responses at the physiological, metabolic, protein, and genetic levels in the animals or plants, as well as being regulated by species, particle properties, exposure time, and dose. Notably, they are also translocated into the food chain and accumulate at higher trophic levels of organisms, resulting in potential biomagnification effects. Therefore, the environmental behavior and toxic effects of micro- and nanoplastics in the aquatic environment urgently need to be identified.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and review articles are welcomed. The scope of research areas may include (but is not limited to) the following:

  • Sources and distribution of micro- and nanoplastics;
  • Environmental behavior and processes;
  • Adsorption, transformation, and bioaccumulation;
  • Toxicological effects and regulation;
  • Physiological and stress responses;
  • Metabolomics, proteomics, and genomics;
  • Ecotoxicity and risk prediction.

Prof. Dr. Xue Bai
Dr. Yang Song
Dr. Wenke Yuan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • micro- and nanoplastics
  • transformation
  • environmental processes
  • toxicological effects
  • physiological reactions
  • oxidative stress
  • ecological risks

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 4023 KiB  
Article
Microplastic Particles and Fibers in Seasonal Ice of the Northern Baltic Sea
by Janika Reineccius, Mareike Heck and Joanna J. Waniek
Toxics 2024, 12(8), 542; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics12080542 - 26 Jul 2024
Viewed by 598
Abstract
Microplastic pollution is a pervasive issue, with remarkably high concentrations observed even in the most remote locations such as Arctic sea ice and snow. The reason for such large microplastic abundances in sea ice is still speculative and applies mainly to saline or [...] Read more.
Microplastic pollution is a pervasive issue, with remarkably high concentrations observed even in the most remote locations such as Arctic sea ice and snow. The reason for such large microplastic abundances in sea ice is still speculative and applies mainly to saline or freshwater conditions. In this study, we investigated seasonal ice core samples collected in March 2021 from the northern Baltic Sea (Gulf of Bothnia) for their microplastic distributions. The Baltic Sea is characterized by low salinity and can be ice-covered for up to six months annually. Microplastics were analyzed in the melted ice samples using an adsorption technique and Raman microscopy to identify their abundances, colors, shapes, and sizes to calculate their masses. Due to the strong dynamic of the ice layer and the repeated melting and freezing processes during the ice formation, no discernible trends in microplastic abundances, masses, or polymer types were observed throughout the ice core length. The average microplastic abundance (±SD) in the Baltic Sea ice was determined to be 22.3 ± 8.6 N L−1, with 64.9% of the particles exhibiting a particulate shape and 35.1% having a fibrous shape. The most prevalent polymer type was polyethylene terephthalate (PET), accounting for 44.4% of all polymers. This is likely due to the high proportion of PET fibers (93.8%). The majority of particle-shaped microplastics were identified as polyethylene (PE; 37.2%), followed by PET (17.2%), polyvinyl chloride (PVC; 15.9%), and polypropylene (PP; 15.9%). No correlations were found between microplastic concentrations and proximity to land, cities, industries, or rivers, except for PP mass concentrations and particle sizes, which correlated with distances to industries in Luleå, Sweden. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1
<p>Overview of the sampling site (<b>a</b>) and respective sampling stations (<b>b</b>) for ice coring in the Gulf of Bothnia (Bothnian Bay) as the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea. Below, the average sea ice covered fraction for the sampling month March 2021 (provided by Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) (2015), MERRA-2 tavgU_2d_ocn_Nx: 2d,diurnal, Time-Averaged, Single-Level, Assimilation, Ocean Surface Diagnostics V5.12.4, Greenbelt, MD, USA, Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), Accessed: [19.04.2024], 10.5067/KLNAVGAX7J66) is illustrated (<b>c</b>). Photographs of the ice coring procedure and a final ice core are illustrated in (<b>d</b>) (photographs by S. Papenmeier, IOW).</p>
Full article ">Figure 2
<p>Total MP abundances (<b>a</b>) and MP masses (<b>b</b>) detected in ice core samples of the northern Baltic Sea. Numbers displayed at the bars represent the individual concentrations.</p>
Full article ">Figure 3
<p>Polymer fractions (<b>a</b>) and size fractions (in μm) (<b>b</b>) of the detected MPs in the ice core samples for particles, fibers, and all MPs as a sum. Fractions were calculated for the MP numbers and masses, respectively.</p>
Full article ">Figure 4
<p>MP distribution through the ice core length of all five ice core samples (<b>a</b>) for the top ice layer (0–5 cm) and the remaining lower layers with depths depending on the ice thickness and core properties. All abundances and masses were given for particles (blue), fibers (red), and all (black) detected MPs as a sum. The depth profiles illustrate the MP distribution through the entire ice core for stations 133 (<b>b</b>) and 141 (<b>c</b>). The shaded areas surrounding the MP mass lines in (<b>b</b>) and (<b>c</b>) represent the small mass ranges resulting from the use of polymer-specific densities for mass calculations (density ranges for each polymer type).</p>
Full article ">
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