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Review
. 2021 Jun:272:129601.
doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129601. Epub 2021 Jan 9.

The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment

Selvakumar Dharmaraj  1 , Veeramuthu Ashokkumar  2 , Sneha Hariharan  3 , Akila Manibharathi  4 , Pau Loke Show  5 , Cheng Tung Chong  6 , Chawalit Ngamcharussrivichai  7
Affiliations
Review

The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment

Selvakumar Dharmaraj et al. Chemosphere. 2021 Jun.

Erratum in

Abstract

Recently, the COVID-19 disease spread has emerged as a worldwide pandemic and cause severe threats to humanity. The World Health Organisation (WHO) releases guidelines to help the countries to reduce the spread of this virus to the public, like wearing masks, hand hygiene, social distancing, shutting down all types of public transports, etc. These conditions led to a worldwide economic fall drastically, and on the other hand, indirect environmental benefits like global air quality improvement and decreased water pollution are also pictured. Currently, use of face masks is part of a comprehensive package of the prevention and control measures that can limit the spread of COVID-19 since there is no clinically proven drugs or vaccine available for COVID-19. Mostly, face masks are made of petroleum-based non-renewable polymers that are non-biodegradable, hazardous to the environment and create health issues. This study demonstrates the extensive use of the face mask and how it affects human health and the marine ecosystem. It has become a great challenge for the government sectors to impose strict regulations for the proper disposal of the masks as medical waste by the public. Neglecting the seriousness of this issue may lead to the release of large tonnes of micro-plastics to the landfill as well as to the marine environment where mostly end-up and thereby affecting their fauna and flora population vastly. Besides, this study highlights the COVID-19 spread, its evolutionary importance, taxonomy, genomic structure, transmission to humans, prevention, and treatment.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Face mask; Marine environment; Pollution.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
SARS-CoV-2 virus entry and infecting the lungs of humans causing the inflammation condition ARDS or SIRS (Alveolar cells reproduced from www.azuravesta.com).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Structure of SARS-CoV-2 Virus (created using biorender.com).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
SARS-CoV-2 genome organization.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
SARS-CoV-2 virus life cycle inside the host cell.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Different types of Masks that are currently in use as well as in research stage (Das et al., 2020, reproduced with permission).
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Present and future plastic pollutants that exist in coastal and marine environment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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