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Microplastics are small fragments of plastic material, generally defined as smaller than what can be seen by the naked eye. Our increased reliance on plastics for countless applications has negative consequences to the environment. For example, the plastic manufacturing process is associated with air pollution, and volatile organic compounds released over the life of the plastic have deleterious health effects for humans.

Plastic waste takes up significant space in landfills. However, microplastics in the aquatic environment has been a newly emerging concern in the public consciousness.

As the name implies, microplastics are very small, generally too small to see although some scientists include pieces up to 5mm in diameter (about a fifth of an inch). They are of various types, including polyethylene (e.g., plastic bags, bottles), polystyrene (e.g., food containers), nylon, or PVC. These plastic items become degraded by heat, UV light, oxidation, mechanical action, and biodegradation by living organisms like bacteria. These processes yield increasingly small particles that eventually can be classified as microplastics.

Microplastics On the Beach
It appears that the beach environment, with its abundant sunlight and very high temperatures at ground level, is where the degradation processes operate fastest. On the hot sand surface, plastic trash fades, becomes brittle, then cracks and breaks down.

High tides and wind pick up the tiny plastic particles and eventually add them to the growing great garbage patches found in the oceans. Since beach pollution is a major contributor of microplastic pollution, beach cleanup efforts turn out to be much more than esthetic exercises.

Environmental Effects of Microplastics
Many persistent organic pollutants (for example, pesticides, PCBs, DDT, and dioxins) float around the oceans at low concentrations, but their hydrophobic nature concentrates them on the surface of plastic particles. Marine animals mistakenly feed on the microplastics, and at the same time ingest the toxic pollutants. The chemicals accumulate in the animal tissues and then increase in concentration as the pollutants are transferred up the food chain.

As the plastics degrade and become brittle, they leach out monomers like BPA which can then be absorbed by marine life, with relatively little known consequences.
Beside the associated chemical loads, ingested plastic materials can be damaging for marine organisms, as they can lead to digestive blockage or internal damage from abrasion. There is still much research needed to properly evaluate this issue.
Being so numerous, microplastics provide abundant surfaces for small organisms to attach. This dramatic increase in colonization opportunities can have population-level consequences. In addition, these plastics are essentially rafts for organisms to travel further then they usually would, making them vectors for spreading invasive marine species.

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A study carried out by marine scientists at NUI Galway found that 73 per cent out of 233 deep water fish from the northwest Atlantic had ingested plastic particles. The research has been published in the international peer-reviewed journal ‘Frontiers in Marine Science’.

As part of the study the NUI Galway scientists participated in a transatlantic crossing on-board the Marine Institute’s Celtic Explorer research vessel.

During this research cruise they took dead deep sea fish from midwater trawls in the northwest Atlantic, such as the Spotted Lanternfish, Glacier Lanternfish, White-spotted Lanternfish, Rakery Beaconlamp, Stout Sawpalate and Scaly Dragonfish, from a depth of up to 600m using large fishing nets.
The fish ranged in size from the smallest species, the Glacier Lantern at 3.5 centimetres to the largest species, the Stout Sawpalate at 59cm. Upon return to Galway the fish were then inspected for microplastics in their stomach contents at the university’s Ryan Institute.

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Microplastic pollution in oceans is far worse than feared, say scientists

A study reveals highest microplastic pollution levels ever recorded in a river in Manchester, UK and shows that billions of particles flooded into the sea from rivers in the area in just one year. Plastic pollution is known to harm marine life and can enter the human food chain via our food and water. Photograph: Will Rose/Greenpeace

The number of tiny plastic pieces polluting the world’s oceans is vastly greater than thought, new research indicates.

The work reveals the highest microplastic pollution yet discovered anywhere in the world in a river near Manchester in the UK. It also shows that the major floods in the area in 2015-16 flushed more than 40bn pieces of microplastic into the sea.

The surge of such a vast amount of microplastic from one small river catchment in a single event led the scientists to conclude that the current estimate for the number of particles in the ocean – five trillon – is a major underestimate.

Microplastics include broken-down plastic waste, synthetic fibres and beads found in personal hygiene products. They are known to harm marine life, which mistake them for food, and can be consumed by humans too via seafood, tap water or other food. The risk to the people, but there are concerns that microplastics can accumulate toxic chemicals and that the tiniest could enter the bloodstream.

“Given their pervasive and persistent nature, microplastics have become a global environmental concern and a potential risk to human populations,” said Rachel Hurley from the University of Manchester and colleagues in their report, published in Nature Geoscience.

The team analysed sediments in 10 rivers within about 20km of Manchester and all but one of the 40 sites showed microplastic contamination. After the winter floods of 2015-16, they took new samples and found that 70% of the microplastics had been swept away, a total of 43bn particles or 850kg. Of those, about 17bn would float in sea water.

“This is a small to medium sized catchment in the north of England, it is one flood event, it is just one year – there is no way that [5tn global] estimate is right,” said Hurley. The researchers said total microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans “must be far higher”.

The worst hotspot, on the River Tame, had more than 500,000 microplastic particles per square metre in the top 10cm of river bed. This is the worst concentration ever reported and 50% more than the previous record, in beach sediments from South Korea. But Hurley said there may well be worse places yet to me measured: “We don’t have much data for huge rivers in the global south, which may have so much more plastic in.”

“There is so much effort going into the marine side of the microplastic problem but this research shows it is really originating upstream in river catchments,” she said. “We need to control those sources to even begin to clean up the oceans.”

About a third of microplastics found by the team before the flooding were microbeads, tiny spheres used in personal care products and banned in the UK in January. This high proportion surprised the scientists, who said the beads may well also derive from industrial uses, which are not covered by the ban.

Erik van Sebille, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and and not part of the research team, said the work does support a much higher estimate of global microplastic pollution in the oceans: “I’m not surprised by that conclusion. In 2015, we found that 99% of all plastic in the ocean is not on the surface anymore. The problem is that we don’t know where that 99% of plastic is. Is it on beaches, the seafloor, in marine organisms? Before we can start thinking about cleaning up the plastic, we’ll first need to know how it’s distributed.”

Anne Marie Mahon, at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Ireland and also not part of the research team, said: “I am actually glad to see the estimate going up a bit, just to show there is this huge contribution coming from the freshwater system.” However, she cautioned that not all the microplastics shown in the study to be flushed out by the floods necessarily entered the sea – some may have been washed over the floodplain instead.

“It is very difficult to tell how this plastic may be affecting us,” Hurley said. “But they definitely do enter in our bodies. The missing gap is we need to know if we are getting contaminants inside us as a result of plastic particles.”

The smallest particles that could be analysed in the new research were 63 microns, roughly the width of a human hair. But much smaller plastic particles will exist, and Hurley said: “It is the really small stuff we get worried about, as they can get through the membranes in the gut and in the bloodstream – that is the real fear.”

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What is the problem with microplastics?
In today’s world, plastic is an essential raw material. Since their invention in the 1930’s, plastics have become ubiquitous in the manufacture of everyday products. In 2012 the plastics industry accounted for more than 1.4 million jobs in over 62,000 companies across the European Union. As useful and versatile as plastics are, however, their unchecked disposal on an unprecedented scale is resulting in significant global impacts on wildlife from marine environment pollution. Microplastics are particularly problematic, and as the life cycle comes full circle, it is feared that they could bring adverse impacts for humans too.

The scale of the issue is massive. One study has estimated that of the 275 million tonnes of plastic waste generated by 192 countries in 2010, 4.8–12.7 million tonnes could have entered the ocean. That’s a serious amount in just one year. The plastic is of various shapes and sizes and ends up on beaches and in the oceans from many sources: large items such as discarded fishing equipment or items from shipping containers are lost into the sea directly, whereas other discarded items can get washed into the seas from rivers. Similarly, inadequately managed land-based plastic waste from countries with lots of coastline can easily end up in the ocean.

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Microplastics are small plastic particles in the environment. While there is some contention over their size, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration classifies microplastics as less than 5 mm in diameter. They come from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, and industrial processes.

Two classifications of microplastics currently exist: primary microplastics are manufactured and are a direct result of human material and product use, and secondary microplastics are microscopic plastic fragments derived from the breakdown of larger plastic debris like the macroscopic parts that make up the bulk of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.[2] Both types are recognized to persist in the environment at high levels, particularly in aquatic and marine ecosystems. The plastic resin beads created for use by manufactures are often called nurdles

Because plastics do not break down for many years, they can be ingested and incorporated into and accumulated in the bodies and tissues of many organisms.[4] The entire cycle and movement of microplastics in the environment is not yet known, but research is currently underway to investigate this issue.

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Plastic is the most prevalent type of marine debris found in our ocean and Great Lakes. Plastic debris can come in all shapes and sizes, but those that are less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a sesame seed) are called “microplastics.”
As an emerging field of study, not a lot is known about microplastics and their impacts yet. The NOAA Marine Debris Program is leading efforts within NOAA to research this topic. Standardized field methods for collecting sediment, sand, and surface-water microplastic samples have been developed and continue to undergo testing. Eventually, field and laboratory protocols will allow for global comparisons of the amount of microplastics released into the environment, which is the first step in determining the final distribution, impacts, and fate of this debris.

Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. In addition, microbeads, a type of microplastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added as exfoliants to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpastes. These tiny particles easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean and Great Lakes, posing a potential threat to aquatic life.

Microbeads are not a recent problem. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic microbeads first appeared in personal care products about fifty years ago, with plastics increasingly replacing natural ingredients. As recently as 2012, this issue was still relatively unknown, with an abundance of products containing plastic microbeads on the market and not a lot of awareness on the part of consumers.

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Plastic is the most prevalent type of marine debris found in our ocean and Great Lakes. Plastic debris can come in all shapes and sizes, but those that are less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a sesame seed) are called “microplastics.”

Microbeads are tiny pieces of polyethylene plastic added to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpastes.

As an emerging field of study, not a lot is known about microplastics and their impacts yet. The NOAA Marine Debris Program is leading efforts within NOAA to research this topic. Standardized field methods for collecting sediment, sand, and surface-water microplastic samples have been developed and continue to undergo testing. Eventually, field and laboratory protocols will allow for global comparisons of the amount of microplastics released into the environment, which is the first step in determining the final distribution, impacts, and fate of this debris.

Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. In addition, microbeads, a type of microplastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added as exfoliants to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpastes. These tiny particles easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean and Great Lakes, posing a potential threat to aquatic life.

Microbeads are not a recent problem. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic microbeads first appeared in personal care products about fifty years ago, with plastics increasingly replacing natural ingredients. As recently as 2012, this issue was still relatively unknown, with an abundance of products containing plastic microbeads on the market and not a lot of awareness on the part of consumers.

On December 28, 2015, President Obama signed the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, banning plastic microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products.

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Microplastics generally refer to plastic particles between 0.33 mm and 5 mm in size[1].  Microplastics can originate from a variety of sources including, microbeads from personal care products; fibers from synthetic clothing; pre-production pellets and powders; and fragments degraded from larger plastic products.  These smaller plastic particles can be ingested by aquatic organisms. ACC’s Plastics Division and it’s member companies are committed to better understanding the potential role of microplastics in the marine environment.

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The Dangers of microplastics to the enviroment and wildlife.

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The Dangers of microplastics to the enviroment and wildlife.

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Sofia de Membiela

Despite the pollution of microplastics being internationally recognized.
Microplastics are spreaded in the marine environment, with the potential to cause harm to marine ecosystem. Here, we would classify the behaviors of microplastics as physical behaviors (i.e. migration, sedimentation and accumulation), chemical behaviors (i.e. degradation and adsorption) and biobehaviors (i.e. ingestion, translocation and biodegradation).

Some of the hidden  products or materials that have microplastics among its ingredients are: face washes and cleansers, toothpastes...

The worst part about micro plastics, is the reaction they have in the sea, because, as like other plastics, they take over 35 years to decompose, and most of them will never biodegrade.

In my opinion, all kinds of plastics harm the enviroment, but microplastics are specially bad because I believe people isn't as concerned about them compared to other plastics.
Day by day, people is more conscious about their waste, but it's still ot enough.

Scientists point that there will be more waste plastic in the sea than fish by 2050, unless the industry cleans up its act.

To try to help, we can avoid food, cosmetic and clothing packaging and recycle as much plastic as we can.

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What are Microplastics?
Microplastics are extremely small pieces of plastic debris in the environment resulting from the disposal and breakdown of consumer products and industrial waste.

Microplastic Pollution:
Microplastics could contribute up to 30% of the 'plastic soup' polluting the world's oceans and – in many developed countries – are a bigger source of marine plastic pollution than the more visible larger pieces of marine litter, according to a 2017 IUCN report.