ИСТИНА

The problem of plastic pollution in natural habitats has been studied and discussed for the last four decades, since the global polymer production industry was established. A major concern of environmental ecologists consists in plastic litter accumulation by marine ecosystems, mainly observed inside subtropical gyres of ocean currents and in the highly polluted Mediterranean sea. At the same time, wide areas of the World Ocean away from accumulation zones demonstrate much lower buoyant plastic density than the so-called Ocean Garbage Patches. However, plastic particles smaller than 5 mm called microplastics are recognized to be a ubiquitous pollutant found in the most remote areas of the World Ocean such as the Arctic and the Antarctic seas, in surface water as well as in the deep water bottom sediments. Plastic pollutants are known to produce multuple mechanically harmful and toxic effects on living organisms as well as to be concentrated in trophic chains, e.g. ascending from invertebrate planktonic organisms up to fish, marine mammals and birds. It causes an even greater concern on human health risks assessment, related to consuming seafood coming from highly polluted areas. In order to develop a proper experiment design we analyzed a set of samples, collected and treated with different grade of precautions to avoid artificial contamination from expeditional and laboratory equipment. All samples were collected in regions with low anthropogenic pressure i.e. Arctic sea regions and Lake Baikal and presumably had low buoyant plastic density. Samples, collected with precautions and analyzed in so-called "clean lab demonstrated low plastic content. At the same time in samples collected without proper anti-contamination treatment large number of microplastic particles was identified, comparable to data obtained from highly polluted regions, where comparisons with the data from external sources were possible. Considering that, we hypothesize that actual human habitat is subject to a high level of microplastic pollution, in most cases coming from every-day-use objects, such as microfibers from synthetic clothwear and microfragments from beverage bottles screw cups abrasion. Hence, possible risks of plastic pollution for human health are primarily due to our own "plastic cloud" formed by artificial sources rather than to the plastic load in products coming from the natural environment.