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Effects of combined microplastics and heavy metals pollution on terrestrial plants and rhizosphere environment: A review
Summary
This review summarizes how microplastics and heavy metals interact in soil to affect plant growth and the surrounding ecosystem. When present together, these pollutants cause significantly more harm than either alone, reducing plant weight by up to 87.5% and altering how heavy metals accumulate in crops -- raising concerns about food safety and human exposure through contaminated agricultural products.
Microplastics (MPs) can enter the soil environment through industry, agricultural production and daily life sources. Their interaction with heavy metals (HMs) poses a significant threat to a variety of terrestrial ecosystems, including agricultural ones, thereby affecting crop quality and threatening human health. This review initially addresses the impact of single and combined contamination with MPs and HMs on soil environment, including changes in soil physicochemical properties, microbial community structure and diversity, fertility, enzyme activity and resistance genes, as well as alterations in heavy metal speciation. The article further explores the effects of this pollution on the growth characteristics of terrestrial plants, such as plant biomass, antioxidant systems, metabolites and photosynthesis. In general, the combined contaminants tend to significantly affect soil environment and terrestrial plant growth, i.e., the impact of combined contaminants on plants weight ranged from -87.5% to 4.55%. Similarities and differences in contamination impact levels stem from the variations in contaminant types, sizes and doses of contaminants and the specific plant growth environments. In addition, MPs can not only infiltrate plants directly, but also significantly affect the accumulation of HMs in terrestrial plants. The heavy metals concentration in plants under the treatment of MPs were 70.26%-36.80%. The co-occurrence of these two pollution types can pose a serious threat to crop productivity and safety. Finally, this study proposes suggestions for future research aiming to address current gaps in knowledge, raises awareness about the impact of combined MPs + HMs pollution on plant growth and eco-environmental security.
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