Occurrence and effects of plastic additives on marine environments and organisms: A review

TLDR: This work identified polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), phthalates, nonylphenols (NP), bisphenol A (BPA) and antioxidants as the most common plastic additives found in marine environments and transfer of these plastic additives to marine organisms has been demonstrated both in laboratory and field studies.

About: This article is published in Chemosphere.The article was published on 2017-09-01 and is currently open access. It has received 671 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Microplastics.

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Table 2: List of common plastic additives and their associated functions and potential effects 107

Table 5: Concentrations of phthalates in seawater in µg L-1 239

Table 7: Concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) in marine sediments in µg kg-1 dry weight 261

Table 4: Concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) in seawater in ng L-1 234

Table 3: Plastic additives and their associated octanol-water partition coefficients (Log Kow). Data were extracted 114 from the following reviews: Bergé et al. (2012), Espinosa et al. (2016), Net et al. (2015) and Oehlmann et al. (2008) 115

Table 9: list of aquatic species, plastic polymer types, exposure times and endpoints used in various leaching experiments 427

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Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Occurrence and effects of plastic additives on marine environments and organisms: a review" ?

This work identified poly-brominated diphenyl ethers ( PBDE ), phthalates, nonylphenols ( NP ), bisphenol A ( BPA ) and antioxidants as the most common plastic additives found in marine environments. Upcoming research focusing on the toxicity of microplastics should include these plastic additives as potential hazards for marine organisms, and a greater focus on the transport and fate of plastic additives is now required considering that these chemicals may easily leach out from plastics.