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Impact of Microplastics on the Environment and Its Mitigation
Summary
This review examines the environmental and biological hazards of microplastics across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, covering their classification as fibers, flakes, fragments, granules, and spheres, their capacity to carry toxic chemicals, and their sorption-desorption dynamics. The authors identify significant gaps in analytical methodology and biological impact data, calling for novel mitigation strategies to address the long-term ecological risks of this emerging contaminant.
Microplastics are generalized as fibres, flakes, fragments, granules and spheres characterized by a diameter of less than 5 mm. Microplastics have an inherent capacity to interfere with natural biogeochemical equilibrium by carrying multifarious toxic chemicals with them. The production process of microplastics also adds more pollution load to the environment due to the non-biodegradable nature of associated polymer by-products. Furthermore, the transportation and distribution of this micropolymer as well as the sorption-desorption process act as a supplement to increase the pollution load index. The present review is an approach to clarify the hazardous environmental and biological impacts of this emerging contaminant in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, along with its mitigation. We found a general lacuna of literatures, especially in light of analytical methodology and biological effects of microplastics. Hence, detailed research in this purview may provide new insights towards adopting certain novel mollification steps to minimize the long-term insults imparted by these group of xenobiotics to our global ecosystems.
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