Microplastic Depuration on Asaphis Detlorata

Microplastic in Danish wastewater

Depuration and relaying

Bivalve molluscan shellfish feed by filtering large volumes of seawater and accumulating food particles from their surrounding environment. When that environment is contaminated by sewage, shellfish will also accumulate human pathogenic bacteria and viruses during filter-feeding and present a health risk when consumed raw or only lightly cooked. In order to render such shellfish fit for consump...

Microplastic ingestion by scleractinian corals

Microplastics (i.e. plastic fragments <5 mm in diameter) are a widespread form of contamination in marine ecosystems around the globe (Moore 2008). Coastal ecosystems, such as inshore coral reefs, are likely to be particularly heavily impacted by microplastics because these contaminants often enter the marine environment through fragmentation of larger plastic items from terrestrial sources (Th...

Ingestion of microplastic has limited impact on a marine larva.

There is increasing concern about the impacts of microplastics (<1 mm) on marine biota. Microplastics may be mistaken for food items and ingested by a wide variety of organisms. While the effects of ingesting microplastic have been explored for some adult organisms, there is poor understanding of the effects of microplastic ingestion on marine larvae. Here, we investigated the ingestion of poly...

Accumulation of microplastic on shorelines woldwide: sources and sinks.

Plastic debris <1 mm (defined here as microplastic) is accumulating in marine habitats. Ingestion of microplastic provides a potential pathway for the transfer of pollutants, monomers, and plastic-additives to organisms with uncertain consequences for their health. Here, we show that microplastic contaminates the shorelines at 18 sites worldwide representing six continents from the poles to the...