Editorial Team

Toxoplasma gondii , a protozoan agent with proven zoonotic potential, is capable of infecting numerous cetaceans in our oceans, causing the onset of severe lesions of multifocal non-purulent encephalitis. Marine contamination by T. gondii has always been considered a land-sea flow essentially confined to coastal areas. However, it was unclear how it could also infect striped dolphins living in the open sea. Tsunamis , underwater seismic events, and, more generally, the motion of aquatic currents can be responsible for the transfer, even over long distances, of T. gondii , as well as other pathogenic microorganisms transmitted by the fecal-oral route. However, recent in-depth research has detected T. gondii and two other protozoan agents— Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia enterica —in the open sea , correlated with polyethylene microspheres and, above all, with polyester microfibers.

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.