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Cross-media environmental effects of landfill micro(nano)plastics: A review towards the decoupling of carbon and nitrogen cycling
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Tiny plastic bits breaking down in landfills may be messing with the natural chemical processes that keep buried trash stable, according to this review of existing research. When these microplastics disrupt the bacteria managing carbon and nitrogen in landfills, it can lead to more greenhouse gas emissions (worsening climate change) and more contaminants leaking into groundwater — meaning landfill pollution could reach further into our air and water supplies than previously thought.
Landfills are important reservoirs and potential sources of micro(nano)plastics (MNPs), where distinctive physicochemical conditions drive plastic fragmentation and aging, enabling MNPs transport across multiple media in landfills. Landfill stabilization is governed by coupled carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling, these processes ultimately regulate upward emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., CH4 and N2O) to the atmosphere and downward, leachate export of inorganic N (e.g., NH4+, NO3-) to groundwater. Although recent studies have increasingly examined landfill C-N cycling, it remains unclear how persistently introduced MNPs act as exogenous stressors to drive C-N decoupling in this coupled multi-media system. This review adopts an MNPs stress driven C-N decoupling perspective and synthesizes MNPs sources, formation mechanisms, and multi-media occurrence in landfills, and evaluates how MNPs perturb microbial community structure and function via particle stress, additive leaching, and contaminant carrier effects, highlighting implications for source-to-sink mitigation in landfills. We further summarize emerging evidence that MNPs can decouple C and N cycling by disrupting functional microbial interactions and electron donor-acceptor balance, thereby intensifying cross-media environmental risks linked to climate warming and groundwater contamination. These insights clarify how MNPs act as biogeochemical disruptors that drive C and N decoupling and inform landfill stabilization and sustainable management.
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