Review on invasion of microplastic in our ecosystem and implications

Abstract

Today the world is going through the “Plastic Age.” Nowadays, it is difficult to find a commonly used convenient item that is nonplastic. Plastic production and consumption, thus, increased exponentially and plastic emerged as one of the major concerns for waste management. Recent studies confirmed a faster rate of plastic degradation than previously believed under various conditions (e.g. saltwater, UV, soil interaction) that microplastic has become a new type of health-hazardous pollution source. Much research has been conducted since the discovery of the “Pacific Garbage Patch,” and the scope has expanded from marine to soil, groundwater, air, and food chain. This article underwent a substantial amount of literature review to verify the degree of microplastic pollution progression in major pillars of the environment (aqueous, terrestrial, airborne, bio-organism, and human). Multiple kinds of literature indicated a high possibility of vigorous interaction among the pillars that microplastic is not stationary at the point of contamination but travels across the nation (transboundary) and medium (transmedium). Thus, only the waste reduction policy (i.e. production and consumption reduction) would be effective through a single national or local effort, while pollution and contamination management require more of a collective, if not global, approach. For these characteristics, this article proposes two most urgently required actions to combat microplastic pollution: (a) global acknowledgement of microplastic as transboundary and transmedium pollution source that require international collective action and (b) standardization of microplastic related research including basic definition and experimental specification to secure global comparativeness among data analysis. Without resolving these two issues, it could be very difficult to obtain an accurate global status mapping of microplastic pollution to design effective and efficient global microplastic pollution management policies.