Characteristics and potential human health risks of microplastics identified in typical clams from South Yellow Sea Mudflat

Abstract

The ingestion of clams (Meretrix) with microplastics (MP) contamination could pose potential risk to human health. The characteristics and potential risks of MP identified in wild-clam and farm-clam from South Yellow Sea Mudflat were studied comprehensively in this paper. The results indicated that MP were identified in both wild-clam (3.4–21.3 items/individual, 2.11–10.65 items/g) and farm-clam (1.3–20.8 items/individual, 0.62–8.67 items/g) among 21 sampling sites along South Yellow Sea Mudflat. The MP abundance of clams from marine estuarine or coast ports were significantly higher than those from purely marine coast mudflat, implying that environmental habitats played an important role on MP characteristics. MP abundance were significantly and positively related to shell length, shell height, shell width and soft tissue wet weight by Pearson test, suggesting the bigger the shell, there existed more MP abundance. Among MP in wild-clams and farm-clams, fragment, fiber were most abundant MP shapes, most MP's sizes were lower than 0.25 mm, the predominant colors were black, red, blue and transparent, chlorinated polyethylene (CPE) was the major polymer. Additionally, estimated dietary intake (EDI) of MP for adults via consumption of wild-clam and farm-clam were 1123.33 ± 399.97 and 795.07 ± 326.72 items/kg/year, respectively, suggesting EDI values of wild-clams were higher than those of farm-clams, and MP intake via wild-clam consumption were more than that via farm-clam consumption. The polymer risk indexes (PRI) of MP in total tissue and digestive system for wild-clam were 1297.8 ± 92.15 (hazard level: IV ~ V), 1038 ± 69.55 (IV ~ V), respectively, while PRI of MP in total tissue and digestive system for farm-clam were 979.92 ± 75.45 (III ~ IV), 735 ± 47.78 (III ~ IV), respectively, implying that PRI and hazard level of MP from wild-clam were higher than those from farm-clam, and the potential risks would decrease greatly when digestive systems of clams are removed during ingestion.