Abstract
Plastics have low density, longevity, excellent barrier properties and relatively low cost, due to these features they are ideal materials for a wide range of manufacturing and packaging applications. According to records, a continuously increasing global annual production of plastics have around 300 million t and this total continues to grow at about 4 % per year. Due to the chemically linked by weak secondary bonds or by physical interaction of polymers, eventually, nano-sized particles from any size of the plastic would spread to the transient environment. The worrying part is that ‘smaller particles are generally more toxic than the corresponding bulk material at the same mass concentration’. On the other hand, increasing nanoplastics (NPs) pollution may lead to unknown environmental risks when considered together with climate change, which has the potential to become an increasingly important environmental issue in the coming decades.
In vivo studies have shown that nano-sized plastic exposure has resulted in bioaccumulation within the body even brain, leading to oxidative DNA damage in the brain regions where it bioaccumulates, compromising immune responses, induction liver lesions and ultimately affecting behavior, physiology and metabolism [1]. Moreover, according to the results of our recent studies, these toxic effects can become more dramatic with low temperature increases [2–5].
Key words; global warming; nanoplastics; microplastics.
References
1. Sökmen TÖ, Sulukan E, Türkoğlu M, Baran A, Özkaraca M, Ceyhun SB. Polystyrene nanoplastics (20 nm) are able to bioaccumulate and cause oxidative DNA damages in the brain tissue of zebrafish embryo (Danio rerio). Neurotoxicology [Internet]. 2020; Available from: https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/a09ee920-16af-3052-a1db-511076679277/
2. Sulukan E, Baran A, Şenol O, Yildirim S, Mavi A, Ceyhun HA, et al. The synergic toxicity of temperature increases and nanopolystrene on zebrafish brain implies that global warming may worsen the current risk based on plastic debris. Science of The Total Environment. Elsevier; 2022;808:152092.
3. Sulukan E, Şenol O, Baran A, Kankaynar M, Yıldırım S, Kızıltan T, et al. Nano-sized polystyrene plastic particles affect many cancer-related biological processes even in the next generations; zebrafish modeling. Science of The Total Environment [Internet]. Elsevier; 2022 [cited 2022 Jun 13];838:156391. Available from: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S004896972203488X
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5. Sulukan E, Baran A, Şenol O, Kankaynar M, Yıldırım S, Bolat İ, et al. Global warming and glyphosate toxicity (I): Adult zebrafish modelling with behavioural, immunohistochemical and metabolomic approaches. Science of The Total Environment. Elsevier; 2023;858:160086.