Plastic litter of all sizes has been acknowledged as a serious threat to biodiversity, especially in the marine environment. The fact that life cycle assessment (LCA) does not properly consider these issues is a serious problem for the aspirations of LCA in the public sphere. This paper focuses on micro- and nano-sized plastics (MNPs), which have the potential to cause a substantial impact on ecosystem quality because of their increased presence in the marine compartment and capacity to affect a greater range of species. The data regarding MNPs’ effect on different aquatic species were extracted from the academic literature. These data were then explored and analyzed to bring to light the possibilities in terms of effect factor (EF) developments and the existing relations between effect on aquatic ecosystems and different parameters such as particle size, polymer type, and shape. No significant difference could be observed between the effect of the different subgroups of MNPs tested when considering a single species. However, when including many species in the analysis, differences could be noted between polystyrene (PS) and other polymer types. The high uncertainty on the developed EFs combined with this lack of statistical difference among subgroups at the single species level suggest that the use of a single generic EF could be appropriate for now. This EF is provided along with Species Sensitivity Distributions developed to allow for a quick visualization of the gathered data used to generate the EFs. This EF can now be used to quantify the physical impact of all MNPs in life cycle impact assessment.

中文翻译：

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生命周期评估中的水生微塑料和纳米塑料：开发用于量化其对生物群的物理影响的影响因子

各种大小的塑料垃圾已被公认为对生物多样性的严重威胁，特别是在海洋环境中。生命周期评估 (LCA) 没有适当考虑这些问题这一事实对于 LCA 在公共领域的愿望来说是一个严重的问题。本文重点介绍微米级和纳米级塑料 (MNP)，它们有可能对生态系统质量产生重大影响，因为它们在海洋隔间中的存在增加，并且能够影响更大范围的物种。有关 MNPs 对不同水生物种的影响的数据是从学术文献中提取的。然后对这些数据进行了探索和分析，以揭示影响因子 (EF) 发展的可能性，以及对水生生态系统的影响与不同参数（如颗粒大小、聚合物类型和形状）之间的现有关系。在考虑单个物种时，在测试的不同 MNP 亚组的影响之间没有观察到显着差异。然而，当在分析中包括许多物种时，聚苯乙烯 (PS) 和其他聚合物类型之间可能存在差异。开发的 EF 的高度不确定性加上亚组之间在单一物种水平上缺乏统计差异表明，目前使用单一通用 EF 可能是合适的。此 EF 与物种敏感性分布一起提供，以允许快速可视化用于生成 EF 的收集数据。该 EF 现在可用于量化所有 MNP 在生命周期影响评估中的物理影响。