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Microplastics as vectors and reservoirs of pharmaceuticals and drugs of abuse: mechanisms, occurrence and analytical challenges
Summary
This review paper looks at how tiny plastic particles in water can act like sponges, soaking up medications and illegal drugs and potentially carrying them through the environment. The catch: scientists don't yet have reliable ways to measure exactly how much of these substances stick to microplastics or predict where they end up, making it hard to know the real risk to people and ecosystems right now. Bottom line: this is an emerging concern worth watching, but researchers need better testing methods before we can say how much this affects human health.
Microplastics (MPs) are increasingly investigated as particulate phases capable of interacting with emerging organic contaminants in aquatic environments. This review critically evaluates the analytical and mechanistic foundations for considering MPs as potential reservoirs and vectors of pharmaceuticals and drugs of abuse. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of physicochemical speciation, including pH-dependent lipophilicity (logD), ionization equilibria, and the evolution of polymer surfaces, in governing contaminant-particle interactions. Experimental evidence indicates that sorption onto MPs cannot be described solely by hydrophobic partitioning (logKow), but involves coupled mechanisms, including electrostatic interactions, surface oxidation induced by aging, and biofilm-mediated processes. While a growing body of literature addresses pharmaceutical sorption, quantitative data on drugs of abuse and new psychoactive substances remain largely lacking, limiting predictive modeling capabilities. A critical gap is represented by the scarcity of pH-dependent plastic-water partition coefficients (Kpw) for ionizable compounds. From an analytical perspective, the integration of microplastic sampling with LC-HRMS-based workflows introduces significant methodological challenges. Sampling artifacts, extraction-induced redistribution, matrix effects in electrospray ionization, adduct formation, in-source fragmentation, and variability in identification confidence levels in non-target analysis directly affect data interpretation. The lack of harmonized QA/QC protocols further limits comparability across studies. The transition toward a dynamic and quantitative framework requires the integration of controlled sorption experiments with HRMS, standardized reporting, and models that account for chemical speciation. Such integration is essential to achieve robust exposure assessments in anthropogenically impacted aquatic systems.