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Agricultural soil survey and inter-laboratory comparison of microplastics across China, Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, 2022-2025
Summary
Scientists studied farm soil covered with plastic sheeting (called mulch film) across five countries to understand how tiny plastic bits build up in the fields where our food is grown. They also tested whether different labs around the world get consistent results when measuring these microplastics, which is key for trusting future research on this topic. This matters because microplastics in farmland could end up in crops and eventually in the food we eat, so having reliable ways to measure them is an important first step toward understanding any health risks.
This dataset entails two components: 1) an agricultural soil survey on fields covered with plastic mulch film to determine drivers of microplastic enrichment and identify microplastic types in China, Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam; 2) an inter-laboratory comparison of microplastic quantification and identification across Australia, China, Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, UK, and Vietnam. The data was generated from 2022 to 2025. We recorded the following data: Part 1 - Soil Survey - Site specific metadata on plastic use and farm practices - Environmental data (precipitation, temperature) - Soil data (pH, EC, nutrients, classification, texture) - Microplastic quantification - Microplastic identification - Metadata for each participating laboratory Part 2 - Inter-laboratory standard comparison - Metadata for each participating laboratory - Polymer identification of known polymer standards - Microplastic recovery rates of known reference standard mediums