Ecological Impact of Microplastics in the Terrestrial Ecosystem

Plastic is most commonly used in packaging, the automotive industries, electronics, and household materials. Plastic is highly persistent in the environment and poses a risk to public health, safe food, and a sustainable environment because of its slow rate of degradation and very often transformation into micro and nano plastics. Because of their size and surface interactions, microplastics can be a vector for contaminants and have a consequent impact due to the transport within and between different ecosystem compartments. There are enormous reports on the occurrence of microplastic in soil, groundwater, fishery products, sugar, honey, beer, beverages, and drinking water. Microplastics, when released to soil systems, create hazards due to their complex interactions with soil matrices. Microplastics affect the soil system by altering soil properties (pH, conductivity, EC, porosity, density) to plants and organisms and by interacting with metals and organic compounds. Microplastics can be transformed depending on environmental conditions and accumulated in organisms, causing direct and indirect impacts on individual species, trophic-level compartments, and the soil ecosystem as well. Evidence indicates that microplastics interact with terrestrial organisms that intervene in essential ecosystem services and functions. The present review summarizes the most recently available knowledge on the sources of microplastic contamination in terrestrial environments, their fates considering geochemistry, impacts on soil quality, and ecological impacts on plants and other biota.