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Article ? AI-assigned paper type based on the abstract. Classification may not be perfect — flag errors using the feedback button. Tier 2 ? Original research — experimental, observational, or case-control study. Direct primary evidence. Environmental Sources Food & Water Marine & Wildlife Remediation Sign in to save

Bibliometric Analysis on the Papers Dedicated to Microplastics in Wastewater Treatments

Catalysts 2021 17 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 45 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Simonetta Palmas, Annalisa Vacca, Laura Mais

Summary

A bibliometric analysis of microplastics research in wastewater treatment found rapid growth in publications since 2015 with China and the EU dominating output, identifying removal efficiency, microplastic characterization, and sludge as the most-studied subtopics and highlighting ecotoxicology and health impacts as underdeveloped areas needing more attention.

Study Type Environmental

The presence of microplastics (MPs) in the environment is becoming a problem for soils and seas, as well as for the food chain of animals and humans. The scientific community has been called upon to contribute to solving the problem and several papers have been published, especially in the last decade. The aim of this work is to carry out a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature dedicated to the problem of MPs, highlighting its course over the years, and to identify the sectors to which the research could be profitably addressed. The VOSviewer software has been used to perform the analysis of the data in which specific maps were used to represent the network of the relationships among countries, journals, organizations, authors, and keywords related to the investigated topic and subtopics. The results of the survey demonstrated that during the investigated range of time, most attention has been paid to the individuation of the MPs, and to marine pollution, while a gap seems to exist in the possible advanced oxidation processes specifically addressing the degradation of MPs and their derivates.

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