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

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, shuttin...

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Autores principales: Dharmaraj, Selvakumar, Ashokkumar, Veeramuthu, Hariharan, Sneha, Manibharathi, Akila, Show, Pau Loke, Chong, Cheng Tung, Ngamcharussrivichai, Chawalit
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836388/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33497928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129601
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author Dharmaraj, Selvakumar
Ashokkumar, Veeramuthu
Hariharan, Sneha
Manibharathi, Akila
Show, Pau Loke
Chong, Cheng Tung
Ngamcharussrivichai, Chawalit
author_facet Dharmaraj, Selvakumar
Ashokkumar, Veeramuthu
Hariharan, Sneha
Manibharathi, Akila
Show, Pau Loke
Chong, Cheng Tung
Ngamcharussrivichai, Chawalit
author_sort Dharmaraj, Selvakumar
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-78363882021-01-26 The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment Dharmaraj, Selvakumar Ashokkumar, Veeramuthu Hariharan, Sneha Manibharathi, Akila Show, Pau Loke Chong, Cheng Tung Ngamcharussrivichai, Chawalit Chemosphere Article 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. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-06 2021-01-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7836388/ /pubmed/33497928 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129601 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Dharmaraj, Selvakumar
Ashokkumar, Veeramuthu
Hariharan, Sneha
Manibharathi, Akila
Show, Pau Loke
Chong, Cheng Tung
Ngamcharussrivichai, Chawalit
The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment
title The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment
title_full The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment
title_fullStr The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment
title_full_unstemmed The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment
title_short The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: A blooming threat to the marine environment
title_sort covid-19 pandemic face mask waste: a blooming threat to the marine environment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836388/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33497928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129601
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