Toxic effects of environmental microplastics on organisms and related analysis methods

An increasingly large amount of plastic waste in the environment poses a potential harmful effect on organisms and more and more attentions have been paid to plastic pollution among the public. Plastic pollutants in the environment may be directly ingested by organisms or indirectly transferred into organisms through other pollutants with plastic components. Microplastics is hard to be degraded and will persist unless being eliminated. In this paper we review studies on the effects of microplastics on human health and challenges in detections of plastic particles in biological environment. We reviewed several microplastics-related aspects, including possible sources, interactions with other chemical pollutants, fate in and impact on the environment, possible ways of entering human body, mechanism of cellular uptake, and methods for separation and identification of microplastics in biological samples, for providing technical references to monitoring, risk assessment and management on environmental microplastics pollution.