Dr Parimal C Bhomick
Dimapur
The term ‘Microplastics’ was first coined by Richard Thompson, a marine ecologist at the University of Plymouth, UK in 2004 to describe plastic particles that are less than 5mm in size, after his group found them in the British beaches. Although the first findings of microbeads and fragments of plastic, in the ocean was reported in the early 1970s. By 2015, oceanographers have estimated that throughout the globe there were between 15 trillion - 51 trillion microplastic particles floating in surface waters. Since then, scientist have seen microplastics everywhere they have looked for; from the remotest regions of the Arctic and Antarctica to the deep ocean floor, from table salt to drinking water and in the air.
Microplastics are present in the environment as a result of plastic pollution ranging from our day-to-day use plastic bags, personal care products, bottles and even synthetic clothing. Most of these plastics braksdown in the environment as a result of sun’s radiation or by oceans wave. Microplastics can also enter as air polluion due to shear off from car tyres on roads and synthetic microfibres sheding from clothing. These particles move around land and sea and can be inhale or eaten by people and other organism from any source.
The estimated production of plastics each year was almost 400 million tones, which is speculated to be double by 2050. According United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEP) 2017 report, an estimate of 4.8–12.7 million metric tons of plastic are introduced to oceans alone annually which further breakdowns over a period of time to give microplastics that will be difficult to collect. And with current COVID-19 pandemic the microplastics in the enviornment have further increased significantly due to the production and disposal of face masks and from other plastic laboratory and medical materials. These microplastics are consumed by marine organisms thinking of it as a source of food which has no nutritional value, and thus might not eat enough food to survive. Microplastics can have a toxic effect on fishes and other aquatic life—reducing food intake, delaying growth, causing oxidative damage and abnormal behavior. For instance, Dorothy H. Horn’s group from Portland State University found that adult Pacific mole crabs (Emerita analoga) exposed to fibres was found to lived shorter lives; while another study by Griffith University, Austrialia found that freshwater zooplankton (Ceriodaphnia dubia) when exposed to microplastic fibres reduces reproduction output by half and that the resulting adults were smaller.
While in case of humans, no direct study on the effect of microplastics has been made, however a study published in May 2021 by Peking University, China found an abundance of microplastics in human feces. According to another report published in March 2021 by a group of scientist, each day children and adults might ingest somewhere from dozens to more than a lakh microplastic particles from various sources. It is experimentally found that water boiler, bottles and other plastic items of daily use shed microplastic and even it be possible that parents making baby formula in hot water could shed microplastic, and the baby might end up taking up more than one million microplastic particles each day. In a much recent published work, microplastics was found in blood of 17 people out of 22 people examined; the microplastics contained in the blood was believed to come from drink bottles (PET Plastics), packaging and carry bags.
It is certain that microplastics are present in both humans and animals, however, the magnitude of whether microplastics are harmful to humans are still uncertain. Works to understand this risk in both humans and animals are intensively been carried out to find out more. Even so, many countries are taking action to reduce microplastics in the environment like the California State Water Resources Control Board,the world’s first regulatory authority to announce standard methods for quantifying microplastic concentrations in drinking water. The amount of microplastics have not even been quantified for many states in India, which includes Nagaland. In Nagaland, river bodies appears to be the final disposal site in many of the cases, and even if it is dumped in soil, there is no proper structured land fill that prevents run-offs and leaching. Thus, plastics on breaking to microplastics may enter the groundwater and contaminate it through any sources, which is an alarming scenraio for the future.
To mitigate this issue, initatives and actions needs to be taken by policy-makers, and the public; to address the unregulated disposal of plastic products; to minimize the release of plastic into the environment; to put ban on single use plastic wherever possible and use of innovated alternative biodegradable products, to reduce littering, to improve recycling, improving, to provide participatory education and research to young people, clean-up campaign of rivers, water streams to create awareness among the general public about the consequences of microplastics for the future—-since this has a multifaceted benefits for the environment and organism well-being. However, on a serious note, care must be taken to ensure only those mitigating actions that do not create new problems in the future.
The writer is Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Immanuel College
