Micro and Nanoplastics analysis: Focus on their classification, sources, and impacts in marine environment

Nowadays, plastic is a vital raw material in the world, especially in the last 30 years since production and use have constantly increased. Growth in plastics discharge into the marine environment attracted extensive research, media, and public attention to evaluating their impact on the environment concerning the plastics classification, sources, and impacts. Studies show that the structure and function of microbial communities in the environment are not able to degrade plastics wastes and the resulting impact on the marine environment has aggravated. This review attempts to fill the gap of knowledge on the characteristics of the state-of-art of plastic in the marine environment by providing a deep analysis of both microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) scheming a critical overview on their determination methods in water, aquatic organisms, sediment, and biota samples, and finally the used instruments. This is followed by discussing the potential effects of plastics on the marine environment. enhancing the transport of other pollutants such as heavy metals, antibiotics and their antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) or dangerous chemicals like hydrophobic chemicals (HOCs) due to their surface area and other transport mechanisms. Recent studies concerned with the identification of MPs and NPs like visual microscopy and chemical composition as density separation with subsequent C: H: N analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), pyrolysis?gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and Raman micro-spectroscopy. Finally, this paper will support researchers to obtain a more broad understanding of the existence of MPs and NPs in the aquatic environment. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.