Environmental Occurrence and Contemporary Health Issues of Micro Plastics

The micro and nanoplastic have wider range of applications in the daily consumable products such as brushing, clothing and beauty product as cleanser, scrubber and shower gel etc. The pervasive occurrence of microplastics at different component of environment such as freshwater, drinking water, marine water, food, agroecosystems, biota, atmosphere, and also in other remote locations is well known. Now a day’s microplastic particles have occurred in a variety of ranges such as shape, size and chemical composition in nature. The health implications are directly related to the complex nature of MPs entering to the human system through different routes. Upon entering it is translocated to different parts of the body system through transformation and weathering process in the biological pathway. The uptake efficiency of PMs through gastrointestinal, alveolar, and dermal epithelium tissue can be determined through its size and nature. The MPs having size of 5–10 μm accumulated in animal tissue such as rat, pig and dogs. In human gastrointestinal tract 90% of MPs bigger than 150 μm size excreted through the stool and the smaller size 0.1–10 μm MPs can cross the blood—brain barrier and placenta and enter to the systematic circulatory system through endocytosis. Traces of MPs also found in human lungs, kidney, liver and brain which are responsible for cellular damage and disturb the human immune system. MPs of size 15–20 μm are very much toxic and can enter into circulatory and lymphatic system in human body. MPs can induce cytotoxicity, genotoxicity and inflammatory response, in human lung tissue, and long-term MP exposure leads to lung diseases including asthma and pneumoconiosis and many more health implications need to be studied. This article is an effort to give an insight on MP pollution and related human health implications. The review focuses on identification of the gap areas in current knowledge and also highlights way forward for future research.