MICROPLÁSTICOS ¿Amenaza Global? Perspectivas de Remediación Ambiental.

GERARDO OBDULIO DIAZ OCAMPO

Mar del Plata

Jornada; Jornadas INVESTIGAR 2020; 2023

Universidad nacional del mar del plata

One first approximation to the word microplastics (MPs) as environmental pollutant was given by the essay, “lost at sea: Where is all the plastic”, the product of fragmentation of larger plastics into micrometric plastic pieces are MPs, they are widespread in the oceans and have accumulated in the pelagic zone and sedimentary habitats (2004-Thompson). Up to that moment, the attention about MPs topic was focused on health hazard as it act as a vector of toxic compounds that are absorbed and released from MPs, described as a phenomenon of plastic particles with spherical morphology in the range of 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm of diameter, which transported persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (1972-Carpenter), plastic particles of a size approximately 0.5 mm or less from the hand cleaners (1996-Gregory) and plastic resin pellets with sizes between 0.1 cm and 0.5 cm in diameter (2001-Mato), all coinciding with the danger they generate to small marine species and birds, informing about the risk that this means for their ecosystems. (2019-Wang) The way in which these MPs gets into the food chain is due to the fish confuse these particles with food, later incorporating them into the human diet.