Microplastics and Food Contamination

"Microplastics" are the plastic particles synthesized which are between the sizes few microns - 5mm in diameter. (Gregory and Andrady, 2003).The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration defines microplastics are the particles smaller than 5 mm. The plastics are differen-tiated as different types such as small microplastics (0.33-1.00 mm), large microplastics (1.01-4.75 mm), mesoplastics (4.76-200 mm) and macroplastics (> 200 mm) (Erikson, 2014). There are various types of microplastics by their form of occurrence such as Fragments (Irregular shaped particles, crystals, fluff, powder, granules, shavings, flakes, films), Fibres (Filaments, microfibres, strands, threads), Beads (Grains, spherical microbeads, microspheres), Foams (Polystyrene, Ex-panded polystyrene. Pellets-Resin pellets, nurdles, pre-production pellets, nibs) (Lusher et al., 2017)