Toxicological Effects of Polyvinyl Chloride and Low Density Polyethylene Microplastics on Territorial Organism

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Due to the limited recovery of discarded materials and their durability, plastic debris is accumulating in the environment. The occurrence of microplastic has been studied exclusively in marine environments, but the terrestrial landmasses have not been studied. In this study, our aim was to examine potential effects of Polyvinyl chloride(PVC) and Low-density polyethylene(LDPE) microplastic in earthworm which is a representative territorial organism. To investigate the toxicological effects of microplastic, oxidative stress and mitochondrial marker were measured with different concentrations of microplastic exposure. As a result, the amounts of ROS/RNS and GSH were increased in both PVC and LDPE groups. However, ATP synthesis was decreased in the PVC treated group and increased in the LDPE treated group with a similar pattern in mitochondrial electron transfer complex activity. These results indicate that each microplastic has different oxidative mechanisms in the earthworm. For PVC, an increase in antioxidant defense led to the elimination of ROS/RNS but failed for the LDPE-treated group. These findings will provide implications for the risk of microplastic in terrestrial ecosystems.