“Abstract: Use of personal protective equipment (PPE) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce virus transmission. Here, we quantitatively analyse emergence of PPE and COVID-19-related litter over 14 months for 11 countries using the litter collection application Litterati. The proportion of masks in litter increased by >80-fold as a result of COVID-19 legislation, from <0.01% to >0.8%. Gloves and wipes, more prevalent at ~0.2% of litter before the pandemic, doubled to 0.4%...
Short-term impacts: Within the first few hours and days, littered PPE and wipes pose a potential viral vector of COVID-19 if used by an infected person…
Long-term impacts: Once in the environment, littered items can continue to have the impacts mentioned above, with the addition of becoming vectors for other pathogens and pollutants. Chemical, physical and biological weathering will break the littered items down from macro-plastics (>5 mm) into micro-plastics (<0.5 mm) and nano-plastics (<100 nm) that have the potential to enter the lower food chain and have toxicological effects including the leaching of metals.”
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