Abstract
A tube-feeding model for administering microplastic (MP, Ø = 30 μm) spheres to fish larvae was employed to quantify the uptake of hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs) into the larval body through a single administration of MP. Polychlorinated biphenyl-153 (PCB-153) was used as a representative HOC that can be sorbed to MP in the sea. Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) larvae (34–51 days post-hatching) were selected as the animal model. The herring larvae were tube-fed a single load of up to 200 polystyrene or polyethylene MP spheres spiked with 14C-labelled PCB-153, and the control larvae were tube-fed an isotonic solution without MP. At the time of sampling (24 h post feeding), some larvae had evacuated all MP spheres from the gut, while others still had MP remaining in the gut. In larvae with a significant number of MP spheres still present in the gut, whole-body scintillation counting (including the MP in the gut lumen) showed elevated levels of the tracer compared to those in the control fish larvae. For larvae in which all or almost all MP had been evacuated by the time of sampling, the tracer levels of the whole body were not significantly different compared to those for the control fish larvae. These data indicate that there was no significant transfer of PCB-153 from contaminated MP into fish larvae within a gut-transit time of <24 h. This study suggests that the vector role of MP in HOC uptake and absorption may be minor compared to that of other HOC uptake pathways.
Highlights
Plastic debris accumulates in marine environments, ranging from coastal areas to deep sea regions, and poses a serious contamination issue (UNEP, 2016)
The applied plastic polymers, PS and low-density PE, are two of the primary synthetic polymers found in the ocean, together with polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) (Mato et al, 2001; Rios et al, 2007; Rochman et al, 2013b; do Sul and Costa, 2014)
We applied an in vivo tube-feeding method that permits the delivery of PE and PS spheres directly into the gut of Atlantic herring larvae to study the uptake of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)-153, as a representative hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs), from contaminated MP spheres in a single administration into the digestive tract
Summary
Plastic debris accumulates in marine environments, ranging from coastal areas to deep sea regions, and poses a serious contamination issue (UNEP, 2016). Plastic particles are known to absorb and perceived to act as vectors for hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs) in the environment (Mato et al, 2001; Ogata et al, 2009; Rochman et al, 2013a; Koelmans et al, 2016). HOCs, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), have high hydrophobicity, high lipophilicity, low biotransformation, and low elimination rate. They bioaccumulate and biomagnify in the food chain upon ingestion (Ja€rv et al, 2017; Nelms et al, 2018). The abovementioned physico-chemical properties of HOCs favour their sorption by organic materials, including synthetic polymers (Lohmann and Muir, 2010). The rate and extent of HOC sorption into MP depends on the molecular weight and concentration of the specific HOC in the water and plastic phases and the particle size and type of the plastic polymer, which eventually determine the polymerewater partition coefficient (Nau-Ritter et al, 1982; Pascall et al, 2005; Vonderheide et al, 2008; Teuten et al, 2009; Fries and Zarfl, 2012; Huffer and Hofmann, 2016; Zhan et al, 2016)
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