Evidence of Marine Microplastics in Commercially Harvested Seafood

Abstract

Microplastic pollution is a global issue that has a detrimental impact on food safety. In marine environments, microplastics are a threat to marine organisms, as they are often the same size range as prey and are mistaken as food. Consumption of microplastics has led to the damage of digestive organs and a reduction in growth and reproductive output. In this study, microplastic pollution was assessed across three commercially available shrimp species that were obtained from the supermarkets of Singapore. A total of 93 individuals were studied from the Pacific white leg shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei, the Argentine red shrimp Pleoticus muelleri and the Indian white shrimp Fenneropenaeus indicus. Microplastic fibers, fragments, film and spheres were identified from the digestive tract of these organisms. Microplastic abundance ranged from 13.4 to 7050 items. F. indicus exhibited the highest number of microplastics. Microplastic film was the most abundant in L. vannamei individuals (93–97%) and spheres were the most abundant in P. muelleri (70%) and F. indicus (61%) individuals. This study demonstrates that microplastic contamination is evident in commonly consumed shrimp and highlights the role of shrimp in the trophic transfer and accumulation of microplastics in seafood. The consumption of microplastic-containing seafood is a route of exposure to humans and has implications on human health and food security. Capsule: Microplastics were examined in three shrimp species from the supermarkets of Singapore. Microplastics ranged from 13.4 to 7050 items of shrimp.

Detection of microplastics in Litopenaeus vannamei (Penaeidae) and Macrobrachium rosenbergii (Palaemonidae) in cultured pond

“…Given that MPs are the same size as sediments and planktonic prey items for lower trophic organisms, the possibility of their ingestion by benthic and pelagic biota, with diverse feeding behaviors, increases as the density of MPs in water increases ( Wright, Thompson & Galloway, 2013 ). Further, the presence of MPs in shrimps in various geographical regions of the world has been previously reported in several studies ( Devriese et al, 2015 ; Abbasi et al, 2018 ; Carreras-Colom et al, 2018 ; Akhbarizadeh, Moore & Keshavarzi, 2019 ; Cau et al, 2019 ; Curren et al, 2020 ; Daniel, Ashraf & Thomas, 2020 ; Hossain et al, 2020 ; Nan et al, 2020 ; Gurjar et al, 2021 ). In this study, shrimps were chosen because they play an important role in the food chain and provide food for a variety of animals, ranging from fish to humans.…”

Development of Microplastic Research in ASEAN

“…Compared to research abroad, the average researcher has started to focus on testing the impact analysis on organisms [20] , because this is one of the method to answer whether microplastics are harmful or not. In addition, the method is capable to find out how the level of danger and its mechanism in the organism.…”

“…The concentration of microplastics at various sampling points has various values [25] ; [26]; [27]; [20] ; [28] ; [29]. The variation of values happened due to the absence of standard procedures for sampling microplastics or standard methods for calculating microplastic concentrations, such as the Standard Method that applies internationally.…”

“…Apart from finding the highest concentration of microplastics in marine organisms, does not mean that processed food is also contaminated [32] ; [9] ; [33] ; [20].…”

Occurrence and distribution of microplastics in the beach sediment of Anday Beach, West Papua (Indonesia)

“…These small particles are available to be ingested by various organisms. The marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and seals [9], sea turtles [10], marine birds [11], crustaceans [12][13]; fish [14][15][16][17][18]; sea cucumber [19][20]; bivalves [21][22][23]; plankton [24][25][26] have been reported to be affected by microplastic debris.…”