Editorial Team
Il Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan agent with proven zoonotic capacity is capable of infecting numerous cetaceans in our oceans, causing the appearance of serious lesions of multifocal non-purulent encephalitis. Marine contamination by T. Gondii has always been considered as a land-sea flow substantially confined to coastal areas. However, it was not explained how it could also infect striped dolphins that live in the open sea. tsunami, underwater seismic events and, more generally, the motion of water currents can be responsible for the transfer, even over long distances, of T. gondii, as well as other pathogenic microorganisms transmitted by the oral-fecal route, but recently in-depth research has revealed in the open sea, T. gondii and two other protozoan agents – Cryptosporidium e Giardia enterica, correlated with polyethylene microspheres and, above all, with polyester microfibres.
Therefore, micro-nanoplastics act as “attractors and concentrators” with respect to environmental contaminants with immunotoxic, neurotoxic and antihormonal/dysendocrine action even in the open sea with serious consequences for all deep-sea fish fauna, with repercussions on our organisms following the ingestion of contaminated fish.
An alarm call, in this sense, has been launched regarding the contamination by fragments and microfragments of plastic material that has affected, over the last three years, all the seas and oceans of the world following the dramatic SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In fact, if future studies were to demonstrate that even towards SARS-CoV-2, micro-nanoplastics would behave in the same way as "rafts" capable of transporting it in the open sea, this could translate into a further threat to the increasingly threatened and precarious state of health and conservation of aquatic mammals, given and considering the potential susceptibility to the virus of numerous species of cetaceans based on the degree of homology existing between the viral receptor ACE-2 of the same and the human one. (Dr. Giovanni Di Guardo).
In conclusion, it appears increasingly clear that the human being is an absolutely integrated part of the environment and if the environment is contaminated, this will return to the human being. These are no longer words that tell of a future to come, this is dramatically the present.
