Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Packaging and Shelf Life journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fpsl Microplastic contamination of packaged meat: Occurrence and associated risks Mikaël Kedzierski a, *, Benjamin Lechat a , Olivier Sire b , Gwénaël Le Maguer c , Véronique Le Tilly b , Stéphane Bruzaud a a IRDL UMR CNRS 6027, Université Bretagne Sud, 56100 Lorient, France b IRDL UMR CNRS 6027, Université Bretagne Sud, 56000 Vannes, France c Coordinator of the Archipel Institute, Université Bretagne Sud, 56100 Lorient, France ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Microplastics Extruded polystyrene Fibres Packaging Contaminant Human alimentation ABSTRACT Food trays are often made from extruded polystyrene (XPS), and quantities of millimetre-sized particles of this material are trapped between the meat they contain and the sealing film. The purpose of this study is to identify the chemical nature of these particles and quantify them. Furthermore, the quantification of synthetic or organic fibres was also carried out. The results show that XPS microplastics (MP-XPS) contaminate food products at a level ranging from 4.0 to 18.7 MP-XPS/kg of packaged meat. Analysis shows that these microplastics are likely to come from the XPS trays. These particles are difficult to remove by mere rinsing and are probably cooked before being consumed. However, at this stage, it is not clear from the scientific literature whether there is a potential risk to humans associated with the ingestion of MP-XPS. In addition to these MP-XPS, it should also be pointed out that fibres can also contaminate meat. 1. Introduction Between 1950 and 2015, 7800 million tons of plastic were pro- duced, half of which between 2002 and 2015 Geyer, Jambeck, & Law, 2017). The physical properties of plastic materials make them essential in industrialized societies. In Europe, the packaging, construction, and automotive sectors account for nearly 70 % of the demand for plastic, with nearly 40 % for packaging alone (PlasticsEurope, 2018). In the food sector, the use of plastic packaging helps in the storage, transport, protection, and preservation of products while reducing their waste (Lange & Wyser, 2003; Mathlouthi, 2013; Piringer & Baner, 2008; PlasticsEurope, 2012). Because some plastics such as expanded poly- styrene (EPS) or extruded polystyrene (XPS) provide a good protection barrier from oxygen, water vapour, and microorganisms, they facilitate the preservation of food products at a desired temperature; hence, they are widely used in food packaging. However, it has been recently re- ported that packaging may release plastic particles and subsequently contaminate our food with plastic fragments (Oßmann et al., 2018; Schymanski, Goldbeck, Humpf, & Fürst, 2018; Winkler et al., 2019). The presence of small plastic particles in the natural environment has been known since the early 1970s (Buchanan, 1971), but it is only in the early 2010s that their presence in food was reported (Barboza, Dick Vethaak, Lavorante, Lundebye, & Guilhermino, 2018). Among these, microplastics, namely plastic particles smaller than 5 mm in size (GESAMP, 2019), were found. In 2013, a study carried out on honey and sugar coming from different countries revealed contamination by fibres and fragments (Liebezeit & Liebezeit, 2013). Although no che- mical analysis was performed to assess the chemical nature of these particles, a connection was established between the morphology of these fragments and the plastic bags used by beekeepers to supply sugar to bees. In 2014, the identification of microplastics in mussels (Mytilus edulis) grown for human consumption suggests that humans ingest these particles (Van Cauwenberghe & Janssen, 2014). To date, several studies have reported the presence of plastic particles in seafood and fish for human consumption (Azevedo-Santos et al., 2019; Barboza & Gimenez, 2015). Microplastics have also been observed in salt (Gündoğdu, 2018; Iñiguez, Conesa, & Fullana, 2017; Karami et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2015), in beers (Kosuth, Mason, & Wattenberg, 2018; Liebezeit & Liebezeit, 2014), and in water bottles (Mason, Welch, & Neratko, 2018). These microplastics, generally smaller than 100 μm, probably come partly from the packaging and/or bottling process (Mason et al., 2018). A large-scale study of tap water showed that 81 % of the water sampled was contaminated mainly by fibres of which an unknown part is of synthetic origin (Kosuth et al., 2018). Fibres can be defined as particles https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fpsl.2020.100489 Received 30 October 2019; Received in revised form 6 February 2020; Accepted 11 February 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mikael.kedzierski@univ-ubs.fr (M. Kedzierski). Food Packaging and Shelf Life 24 (2020) 100489 2214-2894/ © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/). T