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Assessment of the Effects of Biodegradable and Nonbiodegradable Microplastics Combined with Pesticides on the Soil Microbiota
Summary
This study compared how biodegradable PLA and conventional PET microplastics, combined with common pesticides, affect soil microbial communities. Researchers found that PLA microplastics significantly increased microbial diversity but also enriched potentially harmful bacteria and elevated antibiotic resistance gene abundance more than PET, suggesting biodegradable plastics may pose underappreciated ecological risks in agricultural soils.
Microplastics (MPs) and pesticides pose significant threats to the health of soil ecosystems. This study investigated the individual and combined effects of biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA) and nonbiodegradable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics alongside glyphosate and imidacloprid pesticides on soil microbial communities and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) via microcosm experiments. Compared with the control, PLA significantly increased microbial alpha diversity and enhanced microbial functions related to environmental information processing and metabolism. However, PLA also selectively enriched populations of beneficial and potentially pathogenic bacteria, whereas PET had comparatively weaker effects. Crucially, PLA exposure resulted in substantially higher total abundance and ecological risk levels of soil ARGs than did PET. Coexposure with pesticides further amplified these effects, with PLA demonstrating notable synergistic interactions with both glyphosate and imidacloprid. These findings challenge the conventional assumption that biodegradable MPs such as PLA are environmentally safer than nonbiodegradable MPs, thus highlighting their potential to induce more complex and potentially severe ecological risks under co-contamination scenarios with pesticides.