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Microplastics â Part 1: Dynamics of pollution by microplastics
Summary
Researchers reviewed how microplastics — tiny plastic fragments produced as larger plastics break down — spread through and disrupt ecosystems, affecting soil, water, plants, aquatic organisms, and microorganisms. Key factors like particle size, shape, concentration, and chemical composition all influence how harmful microplastics are to living systems.
The main problem behind plastics lies in the difficulty of their biodegradation as well as in their uncontrolled use and the poor management of waste after the useful life cycle is completed.As a result of this problem, another one with a more significant impact in terms of effects emerges: pollution by microplastics (MPs).Consequently, the objective of this article is to describe the problems surrounding MPs as well as their dynamics from a fundamental perspective.This document shows the interaction of MPs with aquaculture species, soil, water, plants, and microorganisms.It is evident that MPs, when released into the environment as a result of the degradation of macroplastics, disturb ecosystem balances through effects on living organisms and systems, with common factors that modulate this effect being the concentration, composition, size, shape, exposure time and type of MP.
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