Abstract
Concerns about the possible ecotoxicological implications of nano-sized plastic materials in the freshwater environment are growing with the increasing use of plastic materials. The present study focuses on the behavior and effects of amidine-functionalized polystyrene (NPLs) of 20, 40, 60, and 100-nm-size in freshwaters and different synthetic media. Daphnia magna was exposed to increasing concentrations from 0.5 to 30 mg/L (and from 0.5 to 100 mg/L for 100-nm-sized NPLs). The results revealed no significant aggregation in ultra-pure water, culture media, and synthetic water. In the presence of natural organic matter, NPLs of 20 and 40 nm displayed better stability in both freshwater and synthetic media, whereas a significant aggregation of 60 and 100 nm PS NPLs was found. All the studied PS NPLs with size between 20 and 100 nm exhibited acute toxicity to D. magna. The observed 48-h immobilization strongly depended on the primary size of PS NPLs, with 20 and 40-nm-size PS NPLs inducing a stronger effect in both freshwaters and synthetic media. Water quality variables such as pH, cation and anion composition, and DOC were of secondary importance. The results of the present study confirmed the toxicity of NPLs of different sizes to crustaceans in natural freshwater and synthetic media and demonstrated the importance of the primary size of NPLs in the behavior and effects of NPLs.
Highlights
The abundance of nano-sized plastic materials in the aquatic environment is continuously increasing with the increasing use of plastic materials and their environmental degradation via physical, chemical, and biological processes [1,2,3]
Before the analysis of the behavior of NPLs in freshwaters, ζ-potential values as well as z-average hydrodynamic diameters were determined in ultra-pure water (UPW), Culture Media (CM), synthetic lake water (SYNW), and SYNW-SRHA
All suspensions of NPLs in UPW, CM, and SYNW exhibited positive ζpotential values ranging between +20 and +50 mV, with higher values being obtained in UPW (Figure 1A)
Summary
The abundance of nano-sized plastic materials in the aquatic environment is continuously increasing with the increasing use of plastic materials and their environmental degradation via physical, chemical, and biological processes [1,2,3]. Nano-sized plastics or nanoplastics (NPLs) will undergo a variety of transformations due to the presence of natural organic matter (NOM) and inorganic colloids (ICs) that will influence their ultimate fate [10,11]. They will rapidly and inevitably interact with different components of NOM, such as humic substances and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) [1,6,11,12,13], resulting in the formation of an eco-corona (or environmental corona) that will modulate NPLs’ bioreactivity and potential impacts [11,14,15].
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