Marine microplastics are a perfect environment for the proliferation of bacteria
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Microplastics, we know, are practically everywhere. Microscopic fragments from envelopes, clothes, fishing material and more or less from any other human artifact, which are concentrated in ever higher quantities in the seas and oceans, with effects on the environment and health yet to be discovered. A few days ago, for example, the announcement was made that microplastics from the Mediterranean could represent the perfect vector for ferrying bacteria, including at least one harmful species that causes serious food poisoning in humans.
Health
Thus microplastics enter the food chain
by Mariella Bussolati
Microfibres in the Mediterranean
The alarm comes from research published in Plos One, which combined advanced microscopy and DNA analysis techniques to identify all the microorganisms found in various samples of microfibres (microplastics from synthetic fabrics) taken in the north-west of the Mediterranean Sea. The results revealed the presence of on average over 2,600 cells on each microfibre, belonging to 195 different bacterial species. Among these, too Vibrio parahaemolyticusa microorganism responsible for food poisoning, usually linked to the consumption of raw or incorrectly cooked shellfish.
The discovery – assure the authors of the study – is worrying, and for several reasons. First of all because the colonization of microfibers by bacteria increases the chances that they will be ingested by marine organisms, such as for example the zooplankton, as it gives the plastic particles an odor more similar to that of the organic particles they feed on. It also reveals that these textile microplastics they can help spread potentially dangerous bacteria in the seas, ferrying them even between marine areas that are very distant from each other, and which can also represent an entrance door for the food chain and the contagion of human beings. Especially in the future, with the constantly rising summer temperatures which will increasingly create the ideal conditions for the proliferation of dangerous bacteria in marine waters.
“Climate change has an important influence on the spread of these potentially pathogenic bacteria,” he explains Maria Luiza Pedrotti, oceanographer at the Sorbonne University in Paris and first author of the research. “Past studies have shown that temperatures are significantly correlated with the increase of vibrios and with the risks of infection. And let’s imagine that when we found the samples containing vibrios, the summer temperatures on the coasts were between 25.2 and 26.5 degrees Celsius, while this year they exceeded 29 degrees in the same areas”.
A global problem
The alarm for the constant growth of pollution from microplastics in the seas and oceans of the planet it’s not new. But by now the phenomenon is reaching truly impressive proportions: no corner of the Earth seems safe from microplastics. This is clearly underlined by a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, which analyzed one of the points on the Earth most distant from any human settlement: the South Pole. The research was conducted during a recent expedition that explored the Weddell Sea ( the part of the Atlantic Ocean that borders the coasts of the Antarctic continent) in search of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship.
Pollution
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The water and ice samples collected during the expedition were analyzed upon return in the laboratories of various British universities, revealing in almost all cases the presence of synthetic microfibres. Based on the quantities found in each sample, the study authors also modeled the trajectories with which the microplastics reach the backwaters of the South Pole, demonstrating that they arrive mainly on the thrust of the winds blowing from South America.
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“Ocean currents and winds are the vectors that push microplastics across the globe, to the most remote corners of the globe,” he explains Nuria Rico Seijo, a researcher at the University of Oxford who collaborated on the study. “The transboundary nature of this type of pollution demonstrates, once again, how urgent and important it is to reach an international agreement to tackle the problem of microplastics.”
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