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Microplastic Uptake in Vegetables: Sources, Mechanisms, Transport and Food Safety
Summary
This review summarizes current knowledge on how microplastics enter vegetables through soil, water, and air, and how they are transported within plant tissues. Researchers found that microplastics can be taken up through roots and move to edible parts, with uptake varying by plant species, particle size, and soil conditions. The findings highlight that vegetable consumption may be an important but underrecognized pathway for human microplastic exposure.
Although microplastic pollution has been recognized as one of the major environmental challenges of the 21st century, its toxicological impact on crops, especially vegetables, has attracted limited scientific attention until recently. Vegetables represent a key component of the human diet, making any potential contamination of great importance for food safety. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have been conducted to investigate the interactions between microplastics and vegetable crops. This review aims to synthesize the current knowledge on the sources of microplastics in agroecosystems, the mechanisms of uptake and translocation in plants, and the physiological and biochemical responses induced by micro- and nanoplastics. This work aims to improve the scientific basis for assessing the risk of microplastic contamination by identifying gaps in current understanding and suggesting future research directions.
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