INRAE, Ifremer and the Universities of Bordeaux (France) and Orebrö (Sweden) have been studying the toll taken by lifelong exposure to toxic microplastics on key biological functions in fish. Two species of fish, one freshwater and the other marine, were exposed for a period of four months to different microplastics, some of which were coated with organic pollutants (spiked), while others were left unmodified (virgin). The team's findings appear in the 5 August 2021 issue of the Journal of Hazardous Materials and reveal harmful impacts on both growth and reproduction for this extended experimental exposure period. How seriously the two core functions were affected depended on a number of variables including polymer type, presence or absence of organic pollutants, and length of exposure.