As pollutants, microplastics can be harmful to the environment and animal health. But now a team of scientists have found that the microplastic  also acts as a potential surface for the lethal virus to move into the freshwater.

For instance, they found that Rotavirus, which causes diarrhoea and an upset stomach, was surviving for up to three days in lake water by attaching itself to the surfaces of microplastics.

Microplastics are tiny plastic particles that result from both commercial product development and the breakdown of larger plastics. As a pollutant, microplastics can be harmful to the environment and animal health Previous studies have focussed only on the spread of such viruses in sterile hospital settings, however, the new study published in the journal Environmental Pollution has shown how they are present in the fresh water as well.

This study has come close on the heels of an almost similar report by researchers at IIT-Bombay which has found the presence of microplastics in food, air and water at the institute’s Powai campus.

The study conducted by the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, published on June 24 in the Elsevier journal Environmental Research, analysed 35 samples each of ambient air and drinking water, and 10 samples of food and deduced that an individual at the campus may be ingesting between 1,414 to 2,610 microplastic particles per day, with cooked food being the dominant mode.

Professor Richard Quilliam, lead researcher from the varsity whose study has been published in.journal Environmental Pollution said, “We found that viruses can attach to microplastics, which allows them to survive in the water for three days, possibly longer,” said “Even if a wastewater treatment plant is doing everything it can to clean sewage waste, the water discharged still has microplastics in it, which are then transported down the river, into the estuary and end up on the beach.

We weren’t sure how well viruses could survive by ‘hitch-hiking’ on plastic in the environment, but they do survive, and they do remain infectious.” The researchers tested two types of viruses – those with an envelope, or “lipid coat” around them, such as the flu virus (they tested bacteriophage Phi6), and those without: enteric viruses, such as rotavirus and norovirus (they tested rotavirus strain SA11).

They found that in those with an envelope, the envelope quickly dissolved, and the virus was deactivated, whereas those without an envelope successfully bound to the microplastics and survived.

“Viruses can also bind to natural surfaces in the environment. However, plastic pollution lasts a lot longer than those materials,” said Quilliam.

“This research is very much a proof-of-concept for conducting more research into how long pathogens can survive by binding to microplastics, as we only tested for three days, and what happens to them next.”