RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Products released from surgical face masks can provoke cytotoxicity in the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum
A1 Sendra Vega, Marta
A1 Rodríguez-Romero, Araceli
A1 Yeste, María Pilar
A1 Blasco, Julián
A1 Tovar-Sánchez, Antonio
K1 Ytotoxicity
K1 Pandemic secondary effects
K1 Phaeodactylum tricornutum
K1 Phytoplankton released
K1 PPE degradation
K1 Bioquímica
K1 Biochemistry
AB Surgical face masks are more present than ever as personal protective equipment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Inthis work, we show that the contents of regular surgical masks: i) polypropylene microfibres and ii) some added metalssuch as: Al, Fe, Cu, Mn, Zn and Ba, may be toxic to some marine life. This work has got two objectives: i) to study therelease rate of the products from face masks in marine water and ii) to assess the toxicity in Phaeodactylum tricornutumof these by-products. To achieve these two objectives, we performed release kinetic experiments by adding masks indifferent stages of fragmentation to marine water (i.e. whole face masks and fragments of them 1.52 ± 0.86 mm). Released microfibres were found after one month in shaking marine water; 0.33 ± 0.24 and 21.13 ± 13.19 fibres·mL−1were collected from the whole and fragmented face masks, respectively. Significant amounts of dissolved metals suchas Mn, Zn and Ni, as well as functional groups only in the water containing the face mask fragments were detected.Water from both treatments was employed to study its toxicity on the marine diatom. Only the water from the facemask fragments showed a significant, dose-dependent, decrease in cell density in P. tricornutum; 53.09 % lower thanin the controls. Although the water from the face mask fragments showed greater effects on the microalgae populationthan the water from the whole face mask, the latter treatment did show significant changes in the photosynthetic apparatus and intrinsic properties of the cells. These results indicate that during fragmentation and degradation facemasks a significant chemical print can be observed in the marine environment.
PB Elsevier
SN 0048-9697
YR 2022
FD 2022-10
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10259/7487
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10259/7487
LA eng
NO Marta Sendra wishes to acknowledge her contract Juan de la Cierva Incorporación (IJC2020-043162-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033 and European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR. Dr. Araceli Rodríguez-Romero is supported by the Spanish grant Juan de la Cierva Incorporación referenced as IJC2018–037545-I.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos
RD 06-may-2024