Plastics in the environment as potential threat to life: an overview

Plastics have become inevitable for human beings in their daily life. Million tons of plastic waste is entering in oceans, soil, freshwater, and sediments. Invasion of plastics in different ecosystems is causing severe problems to inhabitants. Wild animals such as seabirds, fishes, crustaceans, and other invertebrates are mostly effected by plastic entanglements and organic pollutants absorbed and carried by plastics/microplastics. Plastics can also be potentially harmful to human beings and other mammals. Keeping in view the possible harms of plastics, some mitigation strategies must be adopted which may include the use of bioplastics and some natural polymers such as squid-ring teeth protein. This review focuses on the possible sources of intrusion and fate of plastics in different ecosystems, their potential deleterious effects on wildlife, and the measures that can be taken to minimize and avoid the plastic use.