Microplastics Scoping Review of Environmental and Human Exposure Data

Abstract

Scientific studies of microplastics have expanded since 2015, propelling the topic to the forefront of scientific inquiry. Microplastics are ubiquitous in the environment and pose a potential risk to human health. The purpose of this review is to organize microplastics literature into areas of scientific research, summarize the state of the literature and identify the current data gaps in knowledge to promote a better understanding of human exposure to microplastics and their potential health effects. We searched for published literature from eight databases. Our search focused on three categories: (1) microplastics in the environment, (2) adsorption and absorption of chemicals to microplastics, and (3) human exposure to microplastics in the environment. We screened all abstracts to select articles that focused on microplastics. We then screened the remaining articles using criteria outlined in a questionnaire to identify and assign articles to the three scoping review categories. After screening abstracts, we selected 1186 articles (19%) to thoroughly assess their appropriateness for inclusion in the final review. Of the 1186 articles, 903 (76.1%) belonged to the environmental category, 268 (22.6%) to the adsorption and absorption category, and 16 (1.3%) to the human exposure category. Water was the most frequently studied environmental medium (440 articles). Our assessment resulted in 572 articles selected for the final review. Of the 572 publications, 268 (48.2%) included a geographic component and 110 (19.2%) were the product of literature reviews. We also show that relatively few publications have investigated human health effects associated with exposures to microplastics.