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Impact of microplastic ingestion on marine biodiversity in life cycle impact assessment
Publication . Casagrande, Naiara Machado; Martinho, Maria da Graça; Sobral, Maria Paula; Verones, Francesca
In the last decades, large amounts of plastic from anthropogenic activities have reached the aquatic ecosystem. Once plastic is in the environment, species are exposed to it, being physi-cally and chemically affected. Impacts can stem from both macro- and microplastics, as well as from chemical additives from the plastics. The additives are incorporated to the plastic products during the manufacturing process with distinct functions, such as plasticizers, heat and light stabilizers, pesticides or flame-retardants. Aquatic species, exposed to these sub-stances can be harmed due to their potentially toxic effects. However, life cycle impact assess-ment still needs a complete model for assessing the environmental consequences of these ad-ditives. In this thesis, we present a database of physical properties of microplastics, such as size, type, colour, polymer, and chemical composition, which influence ingestion and affect aquatic species. Furthermore, we calculated 25 effect factors for plastic additives on aquatic ecosystems representing 25 additives in 19 effect factors for single chemicals, four for over-arching categories (alkylphenols, benzophenones, brominated flame retardants and phos-phates), one for other and a Generic effect factor. The factors are representative for 73 aquatic species belonging to nine different phyla. These factors were integrated with fate and exposure factors to derive characterisation factors for the leaching of additives from spherical micro-plastic particles (microbeads and spheres) of varying sizes (1μm, 10μm, 100μm, 1000μm and 5000μm) composed of eight different polymers, including EPS, PS, PA/Nylon, PP, HDPE, LDPE, PET, and PVC. This research advances LCIA by providing new data for as-sessing the ecotoxicity of plastic additives and their environmental impacts related to plastic pollution.
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Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
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SFRH/BD/145493/2019