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Identifying Knowledge Gaps and Research Needs in Microplastic Pollution Research
Summary
This review identifies knowledge gaps and research needs in microplastic pollution science, noting ubiquitous detection of microplastics in environmental compartments globally and highlighting unresolved questions about urban-to-rural transport, ecotoxicological effects, and effective mitigation strategies.
Over the past decades, microplastics (MPs) have been detected at horrible levels in our environmental compartments around the globe that have tremendous eco-toxicological effects and are arising as an emerging concern for the world community. These MPs can be transported from urban to rural areas, indicating long-distance atmospheric transport. However, despite the significant number of scientific studies conducted on microplastic pollution (MP) in environmental compartments, more precise information is still needed regarding the source, fate, transport, occurrence, effect, identification procedure, and remediation techniques. Currently, there is a lack of research specifically dedicated to studying atmospheric MPs and their life cycle pathways, resulting in a scarcity of published data on the fate, transport, and occurrence of atmospheric MPs. Hence, the world scientific community needs to focus on this issue. In these circumstances, this chapter aims to overview the current state of MP and collate and compare the recent atmospheric MP research findings with MPs in soil and aquatic environments. Moreover, this chapter presents the potential pathways of atmospheric MPs, their identification techniques, and their impacts, as well as identifying future research needs in this issue. Lastly, this chapter will focus on the standard management of MP in environmental compartments.
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