International Journal of Marine Science, 2025, Vol.15, No.5, 245-254 http://www.aquapublisher.com/index.php/ijms 250 microplastics and their pollutants. Salt is another food that is confirmed to contain microplastics. Testing of salt in many countries such as China, Europe, the United States and other countries shows that microplastics are detected, whether it is sea salt, lake salt or rock salt, among which sea salt content is the highest. A study on China's salt fields said that domestic sea salt contains an average of about 550 microplastic particles per kilogram, mainly fibers and fragments of 50~200 microns (Li et al., 2023). Microplastics of similar orders of magnitude are also detected in sea salt in South Korea and other countries. 5.3 Case analysis: research on microplastic exposure in the body of residents of coastal fishing villages in Asia In order to understand the exposure of microplastics in populations, scholars have begun to directly detect microplastics in human samples. A representative study was a human microplastic exposure survey conducted in a coastal fishing village in Asia. The researchers selected a seaside village near Surabaya, Indonesia, which made a living by fishing, and recruited several adult resident volunteers who had long consumed local seafood to collect their feces samples for microplastic testing. It was found that microplastics were detected in more than half of the subjects' feces, ranging from about 3.3~14 micrograms per gram of feces. These particles are mainly common plastic polymers such as high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene, etc. On average, the HDPE microplastic concentration in the positive samples reached 9.2 µg/g, indicating that the microplastic load in this population cannot be ignored (Figure 2) (Luqman et al., 2021). At the same time, the researchers tested the main exposure sources in the fishing village environment, including fish, shellfish, water, salt and even toothpaste that residents consume daily. The results showed that microplastics were found in the sea fish and shellfish that the subjects often consumed, and microplastics were also present in drinking water and household salt samples. Even a certain toothpaste used by the subjects also contained plastic particles. This study is one of the first cases to directly confirm the presence of microplastics in humans, indicating that coastal high seafood diet populations are being exposed to environmental microplastics. Figure 2 Concentration and prevalence of microplastics in stool samples collected from coastal populations of Kenjeran, Surabaya, Indonesia (Adopted from Luqman et al., 2021) Image caption: (A) Various types of microplastics were detected in 6 out of 11 stool samples; (B) prevalence of different microplastic types in the studied population (Adopted from Luqman et al., 2021) 6 Policies and Regulations to Reduce Microplastic Pollution 6.1 The role of international organizations and multilateral agreements As marine microplastic pollution is global and transboundary, governments and international organizations have begun to act in concert to seek to slow the plastic pollution crisis through multilateral agreements and cooperation mechanisms. Since 2014, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has held the "United Nations
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