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Characteristics of organophosphate ester contamination and multiple influencing factors in various agricultural soils across China: A national-scale investigation
Summary
Researchers conducted a national-scale investigation of organophosphate ester (OPE) contamination across different agricultural land types in China, examining the influence of agronomic practices and environmental factors alongside co-occurring microplastics and phthalate esters. The study found OPEs widely distributed in farmland soils and identified key drivers of contamination levels including soil properties, cropping systems, and proximity to pollution sources.
As plasticizers and flame retardants, organophosphate esters (OPEs) are widely used, and extensively detected in the environment. However, the occurrence of OPEs in different agricultural lands at the national scale in China still require systematically investigated. The impacts of agronomic measures and environmental factors on OPE contamination in farmlands await analysis, and a comprehensive assessment combined with microplastics (MPs) and phthalate esters (PAEs)-another two plastic-related pollutants-is essential. In this study, soil samples from different agricultural lands with field survey questionnaires were collected across mainland China. The results showed that OPE pollutions in greenhouse and blank farmland were significantly higher than that in mulched farmland (p < 0.05). The spatial differences of OPE contamination among different agricultural lands in mainland China were significant (p < 0.05). Similar to MPs and PAEs, OPE contamination in Chinese farmlands was significantly influenced by agronomic measures, meteorological conditions, and soil properties (p < 0.05). Random forest model indicated that the relative importance of influencing factors varied for OPEs, MPs and PAEs, but atmospheric wet deposition emerged as an important factor for all three. This study aims to provide scientific data and feasible measures to reduce the contamination of plastic-related pollutants in farmland soils.