Microplastics as carriers of inorganic and organic contaminants in the environment: A review of recent progress

Microplastics in Different Environmental Matrices: Co-Contaminants and its Monitoring Techniques

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This review synthesized monitoring techniques and occurrence data for microplastics across soil, air, water, and road dust, highlighting how hydrophobic surface properties allow MPs to act as vectors for co-contaminants like PAHs and organochlorine pesticides through multiple binding mechanisms. The co-contaminant transport role of microplastics multiplies their environmental hazard beyond their physical presence alone, making standardized detection methods urgent for assessing combined pollutant risks to ecosystems and human health.

Sources, impacts and distribution of microplastics in different environmental matrices: a review

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This comprehensive review maps the sources, distribution, and environmental impacts of microplastics across marine, riverine, terrestrial, and atmospheric matrices, noting that riverine ecosystems and soil environments remain understudied relative to marine systems. The review underscores that microplastics permeate every environmental compartment — including drinking water sources and food commodities — making ubiquitous human exposure unavoidable without systemic interventions in plastic production and waste management.

Interaction of Microplastics and Organic Pollutants: Quantification, Environmental Fates, and Ecological Consequences

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Microplastics act as vectors for organic pollutants such as pesticides and industrial chemicals, concentrating and transporting these toxins to organisms that ingest the particles, amplifying exposure beyond what either contaminant would cause alone. This combined pollution effect complicates environmental risk assessments and underscores why microplastic contamination is more dangerous than particle counts alone suggest.

Micro- and nano-plastics: an emerging contaminant in marine and freshwater ecosystems

Investigation of Pollution Caused by Microplastics, Their Transporting Effects on Different Pollutants and Possible Treatments: A Review

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Researchers reviewed microplastic transport dynamics and the capacity of microplastic particles to adsorb and carry co-pollutants — including heavy metals, pesticides, and persistent organic compounds — across environmental compartments, as well as current treatment approaches. The Trojan horse effect of microplastics, concentrating and delivering toxic co-contaminants to organisms that ingest them, multiplies the health hazard well beyond the plastic particles themselves.