“3. Disposable masks can directly threaten wildlife
It is widely recognised that plastic pollution can directly affect wildlife (e.g., via ingestion and entanglement), regardless of their habitat, physiology, behavioural patterns. Over 200 species, including marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds, are reported to have been entangled or ingested plastic litter (Kühn et al., 2015). Both ingestion and entanglement can be detrimental to the organisms' survival and reproduction by limiting their mobility and feeding ability…
4. Potential ecotoxicological effects
Once in open environments, single-use-masks will likely undergo fragmentation by physicochemical (e.g., UV radiation, wind, currents) and biochemical (enzymatic activity) processes (Fadare and Okoffo, 2020; Prata et al., 2020), resulting in a myriad of small particles such as micro- and nano-plastics (< 5 mm in size and < 1um in size, respectively; Frias and Nash, 2019). The few monitoring studies on PPE in the environment (summarized in Table 1) evaluated the weathered/deterioration levels of these items (FTIR, SEM), which suggests the release of plastic fibres and microplastics…
5. Final remarks and future recommendations
… [I]ntense use and mismanagement of COVID-19 waste are imposing a severe environmental challenge. Thousands of tons of disposable face masks are ending up in natural environments worldwide; where they can scale up microfibres and hazardous chemicals contamination, with the potential to induce severe effects on their inhabitants, from invertebrates to vertebrates and at different levels of biological systems.”