Environmental hazard of polypropylene microplastics from disposable medical masks: acute toxicity towards and current knowledge on other polypropylene microplastics.

Unlabelled: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of disposable plastics, including medical masks, which have become a necessity in our daily lives. As these are often improperly disposed of, they represent an important potential source of microplastics in the environment. We prepared microplastics from polypropylene medical masks and characterised their size, shape, organic chemical leaching, and acute toxicity to the planktonic crustacean .