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Related Concept Videos

Types of Toxins01:36

Types of Toxins

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Humans continually engage with an environment rich in potentially harmful chemicals. These are introduced to our bodies through inhalation, ingestion, or skin contact. These chemicals exist in various forms, such as air and environmental pollutants, agricultural chemicals, organic solvents, and heavy metals.
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When toxic substances penetrate the human body, they disseminate to various tissues, undergoing metabolic changes. This process yields reactive metabolites that may covalently bind with specific target molecules, resulting in toxicity.
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Sampling, Identification and Characterization of Microplastics Release from Polypropylene Baby Feeding Bottle during Daily Use
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The Toxicity of Microplastics Explorer (ToMEx) 2.0.

Leah M Thornton Hampton1, Dana Briggs Wyler1, Bethanie Carney Almroth2

  • 1Toxicology Department, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project Authority, 3535 Harbor Blvd, Suite 110, Costa Mesa, CA USA.

Microplastics and Nanoplastics
|September 29, 2025
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The updated Toxicity of Microplastics Explorer (ToMEx) database now includes double the microplastic toxicity data, aiding researchers in hazard characterization and risk assessment for aquatic and human health.

Keywords:
Aquatic organismsDatabaseHuman healthMicroplasticToxicity

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Area of Science:

  • Environmental Toxicology
  • Ecotoxicology
  • Risk Assessment

Background:

  • The Toxicity of Microplastics Explorer (ToMEx) database, initially released in 2021, is a crucial open-source resource for microplastic toxicity data.
  • Exponential growth in microplastic research literature has rendered the original ToMEx database outdated, necessitating an update.
  • The database is vital for hazard characterization and risk assessment within the microplastic research community.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To update the ToMEx database by incorporating new toxicity data from peer-reviewed literature using a crowd-sourcing approach.
  • To re-evaluate ecological health-based microplastic thresholds using an updated dataset and a previously established framework.
  • To assess the impact of the updated data on threshold values and their uncertainty intervals for both freshwater and marine environments.

Main Methods:

  • An international crowd-sourcing effort was employed to extract and integrate new microplastic toxicity data into the ToMEx database.
  • A framework utilizing species sensitivity distributions was reapplied to derive ecological health-based microplastic thresholds.
  • Newly extracted data were screened for minimum criteria to determine suitability for threshold derivation.

Main Results:

  • The ToMEx aquatic and human health databases approximately doubled in size, with modest increases in data diversity.
  • Most previously observed trends, such as increased toxicity with smaller particle sizes, persisted.
  • The updated data enabled the separation of freshwater and marine compartments, revealing significant decreases in marine thresholds when molecular/cellular endpoints were included.
  • Thresholds remained wide, and a high percentage of studies (89%) failed screening criteria for threshold derivation, indicating a need for fit-for-purpose data.

Conclusions:

  • The updated ToMEx database (ToMEx 2.0) significantly enhances its value for researchers studying microplastic hazards.
  • The separation of freshwater and marine data revealed distinct impacts on derived thresholds, particularly for marine environments.
  • Despite improvements, the limited number of studies suitable for threshold derivation highlights a critical data gap for environmental managers.
  • Future iterations of ToMEx could benefit from AI applications for data curation and toxicological outcome prediction.