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A review of microplastics pollution in the soil and terrestrial ecosystems: A global and Bangladesh perspective

The Science of The Total Environment 2020 209 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Aniruddha Sarker, Deen Mohammad Deepo, Rakhi Nandi, Juwel Rana, Shaikhul Islam, Shahinoor Rahman, Mohammad Nabil Hossain, Md. Saiful Islam, Artho Baroi, Jang‐Eok Kim

Summary

This review examined microplastic pollution in soils and terrestrial ecosystems from both global and Bangladesh perspectives. Researchers found that while microplastics are well-studied in aquatic environments, their presence in agricultural soils poses a largely unexplored threat to food safety, with evidence suggesting microplastics can transfer from soil through terrestrial agriculture into the human food chain.

Microplastics (MP) are a persistent and silent threat to the environment and are already considered a significant problem in aquatic environments. However, the presence of MP in soils and terrestrial ecosystems has been largely unexplored. Recent research has identified the risk of MP transfer from terrestrial agriculture to the human food chain. Thus, MP should be treated as a future threat to food safety and sustainable agriculture. Several reviews have focused on MP effects within global environmental matrices. However, scant investigations on the disposition, ecological impact and remediation strategies of MP have been reported in case of unexplored soil ecosystems as compared to aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, this review focuses on the contemporary global MP research with respect to research opportunities and related challenges of MP for the soil and terrestrial ecosystem from a Bangladesh perspective.

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