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Ecological risk assessment of marine plastic pollution

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 1143–1153 (2025) Cite this article

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Abstract

Plastic pollution poses serious ecological risks to marine organisms through various pathways, yet a comprehensive risk assessment is lacking. Here we assess the global risks of plastic ingestion, entanglement, pollutant adsorption (methylmercury, MeHg; perfluorooctane sulfonate, PFOS) and additive leaching (bisphenol A; phthalate esters) by integrating a marine plastic model and multisize marine organism data, as well as MeHg and PFOS datasets. Our analysis reveals that ingestion risks vary with the body size of organisms, and are influenced by both biomass distribution and plastic concentration patterns. Entanglement hotspots align with regions of flourishing coastal fisheries, highlighting a substantial threat to marine species. Ingestion risks and toxicity from leached additives are concentrated in the mid-latitude North Pacific Ocean, mid-latitude Atlantic Ocean and northern Indian Ocean. Plastics exhibit high adsorption of PFOS in the North Atlantic and East and Southeast Asian coasts (0.1–0.3 pg m−2) and of MeHg in the northern Indian and southwestern Atlantic oceans (1–18 pg m−2). Using future emission scenarios, we project plastic concentrations and estimate reduced risks under emission control strategies. These findings emphasize the urgent need for targeted mitigation efforts and policy interventions to curb escalating impacts of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems.

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Fig. 1: Plastic ingestion risk by marine organism size and type.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 2: Ingestion risk index for varied organisms of different body sizes contributed by different plastic types.
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Fig. 3: Plastic entanglement risk for marine organisms.
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Fig. 4: Global distribution of and exposure risk of organisms to pollutants adsorbed and conveyed by plastics.
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Fig. 5: Global distributions of leached PAEs and BPA from plastics.
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Fig. 6: Marine plastic concentration and risk index ratios across various pathways between 2060 and 2018.
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Data availability

Data are available in the text, in Supplementary Information or on the website. Plastic data are available at https://www.ebmg.online/plastics/plastic. The biomass datasets are available via Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/1460596 (ref. 77).

PFOS data are available at https://www.ebmg.online/plastics/PFOS. MeHg data are available at https://www.ebmg.online/plastics/MeHg.

Code availability

All model code is available at the research group website:

https://www.ebmg.online/plastics/MITgcm-code.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge O. Aumont et al. for providing their data and insights, which substantially contributed to this research. The data utilized in this study were sourced from their article ‘Evaluating the potential impacts of the diurnal vertical migration by marine organisms on marine biogeochemistry’, published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles76. Additionally, we appreciate the support and contributions of M. Egger for his review and suggestions on our paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Ziman Zhang, Xinle Wang, Qiaotong Pang, Yujuan Wang & Lili Lei

  2. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Peipei Wu

  3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Xianming Zhang

  4. Aotearoa Blue Ocean Research, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    Karin Kvale

  5. School of Environment and Energy, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Eddy Y. Zeng

  6. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Yanxu Zhang

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Contributions

Y.Z. and Z.Z. conceived the study. Z.Z., P.W., X.W., Q.P. and X.Z. developed the methodology. Z.Z., P.W. and Y.W. performed the visualization. Y.Z. administered the project and provided overall supervision. Z.Z. and Y.Z. prepared the original draft of the manuscript. Y.Z., Z.Z., X.Z., E.Y.Z., K.K. and L.L. contributed to the review and editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yanxu Zhang.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Additive mass and leaching rates from ocean plastics in 2018
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Zhang, Z., Wu, P., Wang, X. et al. Ecological risk assessment of marine plastic pollution. Nat Sustain 8, 1143–1153 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01620-x

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