Assessment of the Influence of Size and Concentration on the Ecotoxicity of Microplastics to Microalgae Scenedesmus sp., Bacterium Pseudomonas putida and Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The harmful effects of microplastics are not yet fully revealed. This study tested harmful effects of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics were tested. Growth inhibition tests were conducted using three microorganisms with different characteristics: sp., , and . The growth inhibition test with sp. is relatively widely used, while the tests with and were, to our knowledge, applied to microplastics for the first time. The influence of concentration and size of microplastic particles, in the range of 50-1000 mg/L and 200-600 µm, was tested. Determined inhibitions on all three microorganisms confirmed the hazardous potential of the microplastics used. Modeling of the inhibition surface showed the increase in harmfulness with increasing concentration of the microplastics. Particle size showed no effect for with PE, PP and PET, with PS, and with PP. In the remaining cases, higher inhibitions followed a decrease in particle size. The exception was sp. with PS, where the lowest inhibitions were obtained at 400 µm. Finally, among the applied tests, the test with proved to be the most sensitive to microplastics.