Anna Turns: Small crustacean can fragment microplastics in four days, study finds
Small crustaceans can
fragment microplastics into pieces smaller than a cell within 96 hours, a study has shown. Until now, plastic
fragmentation has been largely attributed to slow physical processes such as
sunlight and wave action, which can take years and even decades. Environmental
scientists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland studying the 2cm-long amphipod Gammarus
duebeni found that microplastic beads were not only ingested but were
also fragmented incredibly quickly into nanoplastics.
Because these
fragments are small enough to pass through cell walls, it is thought they are
likely to be potentially more damaging to wildlife than microplastics of up to
5mm in size. Dr Alicia
Mateos-Cárdenas, the lead author of the research published in Scientific Reports,
said that her findings were “completely unexpected”. “When I started
studying this three years ago, it sounded so crazy that such small animals
could be fragmenting plastics but our research shows that plastic fragments
comprised nearly 66% of all observed microplastic particles accumulated in the
guts of these animals.”...
