Papers

20 results
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Article Tier 2

Role of soil microplastic pollution in climate change

This review examined the bidirectional relationship between soil microplastic pollution and climate change, exploring how microplastics affect soil carbon cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and how climate factors influence microplastic behavior in soils.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 56 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic pollution in soils, plants, and animals: A review of distributions, effects and potential mechanisms

This review covers the distribution and effects of microplastics in soils, plants, and animals, examining how plastic pollution moves through terrestrial ecosystems. Microplastics in soil can alter microbial communities, reduce plant growth, and accumulate in animals that ingest contaminated food or water. The review highlights that land-based microplastic pollution is as serious a concern as ocean contamination and poses direct risks to agriculture and human food safety.

2022 The Science of The Total Environment 223 citations
Article Tier 2

Spatial Risks ofMicroplastics in Soils and the CascadingEffects Thereof

This review mapped the spatial risks of microplastic contamination in global soils, examining how climate, land use, and human activities distribute MP pollution and analyzing cascading effects on soil ecology, carbon cycling, and ecosystem services.

2025 Figshare
Article Tier 2

Microplastic Pollution in Terrestrial Ecosystems and Its Interaction with Other Soil Pollutants: A Potential Threat to Soil Ecosystem Sustainability

This review examines microplastic pollution in soils and how plastic particles interact with other pollutants like pesticides and heavy metals. About 80% of all plastic waste produced in the last 75 years has ended up in landfills or the environment, where it breaks into microplastics that alter soil health and contaminate crops. The combined effects of microplastics with other soil pollutants could threaten food safety and ultimately human health.

2023 Resources 83 citations
Article Tier 2

Impact of microplastics on terrestrial ecosystems: A plant-centric perspective

This review focuses on how microplastics affect plants and soil health in agricultural settings, an area that has received less attention than marine microplastic pollution. The researchers describe how microplastics can alter soil structure, disrupt microbial communities, and enter plant tissues through unique transport mechanisms. The study highlights that agricultural soils are a major sink for microplastics, with potential consequences for food safety and crop productivity.

2024 Environmental Pollution and Management 7 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic pollution in terrestrial ecosystems: Global implications and sustainable solutions

This review examines microplastic pollution in terrestrial ecosystems, an area that has received far less attention than ocean plastic pollution despite soil being a major sink for these contaminants. The study covers how microplastics interact with other soil pollutants, affect plant growth and soil health, and discusses both policy solutions and practical removal methods to reduce the amount of microplastics that enter the food chain.

2023 Journal of Hazardous Materials 182 citations
Article Tier 2

Soils in distress: The impacts and ecological risks of (micro)plastic pollution in the terrestrial environment

This review examines how microplastics affect soil ecosystems, including their transport into soils, changes they undergo in the environment, and their interactions with soil organisms. The effects depend heavily on the type, shape, size, and amount of plastic particles present. Understanding these impacts is important because soil contamination with microplastics can affect food production and ultimately human exposure through the food chain.

2023 Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 93 citations
Article Tier 2

Integrating microplastic research in sustainable agriculture: Challenges and future directions for food production

Researchers reviewed how microplastics interact with environmental stressors like heat, drought, and salinity to threaten crop health and food safety, finding that microplastics can increase toxic metal uptake in plants and alter growth — with risks likely to worsen as climate change intensifies.

2025 Current Plant Biology 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Micro (nano) plastic pollution: The ecological influence on soil-plant system and human health.

This review examines how micro- and nanoplastics affect soil health, plant growth, and food quality, finding that these particles accumulate in plant root systems and can reduce crop yields and alter nutritional content. Since contaminated soil and water are increasingly delivering microplastics to food crops, these findings are directly relevant to agricultural food safety.

2021 The Science of the total environment
Article Tier 2

Soil under stress: The importance of soil life and how it is influenced by (micro)plastic pollution

This review examines how plastic pollution in soil disrupts soil organisms and microorganisms that regulate essential ecosystem functions, finding that plastic alters soil chemistry, physical structure, and microbial communities in ways that threaten primary production and carbon cycling.

2022 Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal 78 citations
Review Tier 2

Microplastics in plant-microbes-soil system: A review on recent studies

This review examined microplastic interactions within the plant-microbe-soil system, finding that microplastics affect soil physicochemical properties, alter microbial communities, and can be taken up by plants, with implications for food safety and ecosystem health.

2021 The Science of The Total Environment 111 citations
Article Tier 2

Toxicological complexity of microplastics in terrestrial ecosystems

This review summarizes how microplastics interact with other pollutants like heavy metals and pesticides in soil, creating combined toxic effects that threaten ecosystems and agriculture. The paper highlights that microplastics can change soil structure and disrupt the communities of microorganisms that keep soil healthy, with ripple effects on crop yields and food security.

2025 iScience 23 citations
Article Tier 2

The Crucial Nexus of Microplastics on Ecosystem and Climate Change: Types, Source, Impacts, and Transport

This review summarizes the current understanding of microplastic types, sources, environmental impacts, and transport pathways across ecosystems. It highlights that microplastics not only harm organisms through ingestion and physical damage but may also influence climate change by affecting soil carbon storage and ocean processes. The review emphasizes that microplastic pollution is a global challenge requiring coordinated solutions across waste management, policy, and consumer behavior.

2024 Water Air & Soil Pollution 18 citations
Article Tier 2

Climate change and microplastics: a two-way interaction

This review characterises the bidirectional relationship between microplastics and climate change: plastics production and degradation generate greenhouse gases, while rising temperatures and changing precipitation alter MP distribution and toxicity in ecosystems. It calls for integrated strategies that address both plastic pollution and climate change.

2025 Emerging Contaminants and Environmental Health 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Fate of microplastics under the influence of climate change

This paper discusses how climate change is reshaping the fate of microplastics in the environment through mechanisms like melting ice releasing stored particles, increased rainfall washing debris into waterways, and stronger winds redistributing contamination. Researchers found that rising temperatures also accelerate the chemical breakdown of microplastics, potentially releasing additional harmful substances. The study frames microplastic pollution within the broader context of planetary boundaries, suggesting the two environmental crises are deeply interconnected.

2023 iScience 139 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics as an Emerging Environmental Pollutant in Agricultural Soils: Effects on Ecosystems and Human Health

This review examines how microplastics enter and move through agricultural soil ecosystems, affecting soil properties, nutrient cycling, and the organisms that live in and depend on healthy soil. Researchers found that microplastics can alter key biogeochemical processes and interact with co-existing pollutants like heavy metals and pesticides, potentially compounding their harmful effects. The study highlights the need for prevention and control strategies as microplastic contamination of farmland becomes an increasingly recognized environmental and potential human health concern.

2022 Frontiers in Environmental Science 151 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics in terrestrial ecosystem: Exploring the menace to the soil-plant-microbe interactions

This review summarizes existing research on how microplastics affect the complex relationships between soil, plants, and soil microbes. Microplastics alter soil structure, change the makeup of microbial communities, and disrupt beneficial partnerships between plants and helpful fungi and bacteria. These disruptions can reduce plant growth and nutrient cycling, which could ultimately affect crop yields and the quality of food produced on microplastic-contaminated farmland.

2024 TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry 81 citations
Article Tier 2

How microplastics are destroying soil and human health

This review examined how microplastics harm soil health — disrupting soil structure, water retention, microbial communities, and nutrient cycling — and how soil degradation translates into risks for human health through food and water contamination. It argues that soil microplastic pollution deserves equivalent attention to aquatic contamination.

2024
Article Tier 2

A Review on Microplastic in the Soils and Their Impact on Soil Microbes, Crops and Humans

This review examines microplastic contamination in agricultural soils, detailing how microplastic particles act as vectors for toxic organic pollutants and heavy metals, disrupting soil physicochemical properties, microbial communities, crop growth, and ultimately entering the human food chain.

2022 International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 7 citations
Article Tier 2

Interactive Effects of Microplastic Pollution and Global Warming on Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics in Subtropical Forests

Scientists studied how tiny plastic particles (microplastics) affect forest soil when combined with warming temperatures, and found that these plastics disrupt how soil processes carbon and nitrogen - key nutrients that keep ecosystems healthy. The plastic pollution made soils more sensitive to temperature changes and altered important chemical cycles that plants depend on for growth. This matters because microplastics are everywhere in our environment, and this research shows they could harm the forest ecosystems that clean our air and water, especially as the planet continues to warm.

2026