Systematic Meta-analysis of Microplastic Concentrations in Aqueous Ecosystems

Among the 100 incidences of MPs concentration in laboratory, 22 points had concentrations lying below the highest reported environmental concentration i.e., 1.54E+08 MPs/m3. An in-depth search of the MPs related available literature lead us into formulating a Hypothesis as: The severity of the MP toxicity increases with increasing number of particles and decreasing size. The lowest environmentally occurring concentration of MPs was found to be reported in the Gulf of Maine in the United States by Law et al., (2010), with an abundance of around 0.001particles/m³ while the has been used to assess MPs toxicity in primary producers using Skeletonema costatum model system.approximately 4.17E+11-fold higher MPs concentrations compared to environmentally relevant concentrations. Among the total of 100 studies done under laboratory settings, only 22.0% lie under the reported field concentration.