Assessment of the Influence of Size and Concentration on the Ecotoxicity of Microplastics to Microalgae Sp., Bacterium and Yeast

Overview

Journal Polymers (Basel)

Publisher MDPI

Date 2022 Mar 26

PMID 35335576

Authors

Martina Miloloza

Kristina Bule

Viktorija Prevaric

Matija Cvetnic

Sime Ukic

Tomislav Bolanca

Dajana Kucic Grgic

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The harmful effects of microplastics are not yet fully revealed. This study tested harmful effects of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics were tested. Growth inhibition tests were conducted using three microorganisms with different characteristics: sp., , and . The growth inhibition test with sp. is relatively widely used, while the tests with and were, to our knowledge, applied to microplastics for the first time. The influence of concentration and size of microplastic particles, in the range of 50-1000 mg/L and 200-600 µm, was tested. Determined inhibitions on all three microorganisms confirmed the hazardous potential of the microplastics used. Modeling of the inhibition surface showed the increase in harmfulness with increasing concentration of the microplastics. Particle size showed no effect for with PE, PP and PET, with PS, and with PP. In the remaining cases, higher inhibitions followed a decrease in particle size. The exception was sp. with PS, where the lowest inhibitions were obtained at 400 µm. Finally, among the applied tests, the test with proved to be the most sensitive to microplastics.

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