Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Phytotoxic Effects of Treated Wastewater Used for Agricultural Irrigation On Root Hydraulic Conductivity and Plant Growth

This study tested whether treated municipal wastewater used for crop irrigation harms plants, finding effects on root water transport and growth. Treated wastewater often contains microplastics and plastic-associated chemicals, and irrigating with it may be a pathway for these contaminants to enter food crops.

2021
Article Tier 2

Emerging contaminants and their influence on plants: An in-depth review

This review examines how emerging contaminants including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and nanomaterials accumulate in soil and affect plant health. The study found these pollutants can disrupt plant growth through various toxic mechanisms and persist in food webs, highlighting the need for effective mitigation strategies to protect crop productivity, soil health, and food security.

2025 Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Food Plants and Environmental Contamination: An Update

This review examines how food plants absorb contaminants from polluted environments, including heavy metals, pesticides, and microplastics. Microplastics have been found in the roots, leaves, and fruits of food crops, creating a direct pathway for human exposure through diet. The authors discuss both traditional and new technologies for reducing contamination in food production, highlighting the need for soil and water monitoring to ensure food safety.

2024 Toxics 14 citations
Article Tier 2

Impact of Wastewater on the Soil–Plant–Atmosphere Interface: Challenges and Remediation Approaches

This review examines the wide-ranging impacts of using wastewater for agricultural irrigation, covering effects on soil health, crop safety, and greenhouse gas emissions. Among the many concerns discussed, microplastics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerging from wastewater reuse are flagged as growing threats requiring better monitoring and policy responses. For readers interested in microplastics, the paper highlights how irrigation with wastewater is one of the pathways by which plastic particles enter farmland soils and ultimately the food chain.

2025 Science and Society Insights 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Looking into the effects of co-contamination by micro(nano)plastics in the presence of other pollutants on irrigated edible plants

This review examines the combined effects of micro- and nanoplastics with other pollutants found in treated wastewater used for crop irrigation. Researchers analyzed 19 studies and found that the joint exposure to plastics and contaminants like heavy metals or pesticides often produced different toxicity outcomes than either pollutant alone. The findings suggest that using reclaimed wastewater for irrigation may expose food crops to complex mixtures of pollutants whose combined effects are still poorly understood.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 25 citations
Article Tier 2

Phytoremediation Mechanism for Emerging Pollutants : A Review

This review covers how plants can be used to clean up emerging pollutants, including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and personal care product chemicals from contaminated soil and water. Plants absorb these pollutants through their roots and either break them down or store them in their tissues. Phytoremediation offers a cost-effective and environmentally friendly strategy for addressing the growing problem of emerging contaminants in the environment.

2023 Tropical Aquatic and Soil Pollution 38 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics and plant health: a comprehensive review of sources, distribution, toxicity, and remediation

This review summarizes how microplastics enter soil from agricultural films, sewage sludge, textiles, and cosmetics, then get absorbed by plant roots and transported to edible parts, posing risks to food safety. Exposure to microplastics causes oxidative stress, genetic damage, and disrupts photosynthesis in plants, while also carrying heavy metals and pathogens deeper into the food chain.

2025 npj Emerging Contaminants 37 citations
Review Tier 2

Micro and nano plastics in fruits and vegetables: A review.

This review examined how microplastics contaminate fruits and vegetables through root uptake, surface adhesion, and irrigation water, covering analytical methods for detection and highlighting the role of plants as an underappreciated entry point for plastics into the human food chain.

2024 Heliyon
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

Uptake and bioaccumulation of microplastics by plants: Exploring impacts and remediation potential in terrestrial and aquatic environment

This review examined how plants take up and accumulate microplastics from contaminated soil, finding that plastics can disrupt soil microbial communities, reduce nutrient availability, and impair plant growth. The uptake of microplastics by edible crops raises concerns about food chain transfer to humans, since the particles can carry toxic pollutants like persistent organic compounds and heavy metals.

2025 Chemosphere 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Possible effects on plants due to microplastics in soils from wastewater effluent reuse or sewage sludge application

This book chapter reviews potential effects of microplastics on plants when microplastic-containing wastewater or sewage sludge is applied to agricultural land. The research addresses how land application of treated sewage can introduce microplastics into soil where they may affect crop growth and food safety.

2020 IWA Publishing eBooks
Article Tier 2

Uptake, transport and accumulation of micro- and nano-plastics in terrestrial plants and health risk associated with their transfer to food chain - A mini review.

This review examines how micro- and nano-plastics (MNPs) are taken up, transported, and accumulated in terrestrial plants, and assesses the associated health risks as MNPs transfer through the food chain from contaminated soil and water environments.

2023 The Science of the total environment
Article Tier 2

Micro and nanoplastics pollution: Sources, distribution, uptake in plants, toxicological effects, and innovative remediation strategies for environmental sustainability

This review examines how microplastics and nanoplastics enter plants through roots, disrupt growth and photosynthesis, and cause oxidative stress that reduces crop yields. Because these plastic particles can move through plant tissues and into edible parts, they represent a potential pathway for microplastics to enter the human food supply.

2024 Plant Physiology and Biochemistry 62 citations
Article Tier 2

Co-contaminant risks in water reuse and biosolids application for agriculture

This review highlights that treated wastewater and biosolids used in farming contain a complex mixture of pollutants including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria that enter soil and can be taken up by crops. The combined effects of these pollutants may be greater than the sum of their individual risks, underscoring the need for better safety assessments of recycled water and waste used in food production.

2025 Environmental Pollution 10 citations
Review Tier 2

Uptake and Accumulation of Nano/Microplastics in Plants: A Critical Review

This review summarizes the latest research on how microplastics and nanoplastics are taken up by food crops through roots and leaves. Nanoplastics can penetrate plant cell walls more easily than larger microplastics, and the water-pulling force of transpiration is the main driver moving particles up through the plant. These findings are important for food safety because they confirm that plastic particles in contaminated soil can end up inside the fruits and vegetables people eat.

2021 Nanomaterials 394 citations
Article Tier 2

Biological Risks of Waste Water for Irrigation

This study examined the biological risks of using treated wastewater for irrigation, including contamination by pathogens, heavy metals, and microplastics, and the implications for agricultural sustainability and public health.

2022 CURRENT TRENDS IN NATURAL SCIENCES 4 citations
Systematic Review Tier 1

Bibliometric analysis and systematic review of the adherence, uptake, translocation, and reduction of micro/nanoplastics in terrestrial plants

This bibliometric analysis and systematic review synthesized research on how micro- and nanoplastics adhere to, are absorbed by, and translocate through terrestrial plants, with potential accumulation in edible tissues. The study found that particle size, surface charge, and plant species all influence uptake, and that current research lacks standardized methods, making it difficult to fully assess the risk of microplastics entering the human food chain through crops.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 20 citations
Article Tier 2

Possible effects on plants due to microplastics in soils from wastewater effluent reuse or sewage sludge application

This chapter reviews the possible effects of microplastics in soils on plant health, with particular focus on soils irrigated with reclaimed wastewater or amended with sewage sludge — two major pathways for microplastic entry into agricultural land. Evidence suggests that microplastics can affect plant growth and may alter soil properties.

2019 IWA Publishing eBooks
Article Tier 2

Micro/nanoplastics: a potential threat to crops

This review examines micro- and nanoplastic contamination in agricultural soil and water, summarizing sources, adsorption onto microplastics, uptake pathways into crops, effects on plant growth and physiology, and current detection and removal approaches, while highlighting the limited data on nanoplastic transport in plants.

2023 Vegetable Research 5 citations
Article Tier 2

Micro/nanoplastics: Critical review of their impacts on plants, interactions with other contaminants (antibiotics, heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and management strategies

This review examines how micro- and nanoplastics harm plants, both alone and in combination with other pollutants like antibiotics, heavy metals, and hydrocarbons. The combined exposure often worsens the damage, including inhibited growth, reduced seed germination, and genetic toxicity. The review also explores strategies to reduce this plant damage, which matters for food safety since contaminated crops are a route for microplastics to reach humans.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 83 citations
Article Tier 2

Mechanistic understanding on the uptake of micro-nano plastics by plants and its phytoremediation.

This review summarized the mechanisms by which micro-nano plastics are taken up by plants through roots and leaves, and evaluated the potential for phytoremediation as a strategy to reduce plastic contamination in soil, identifying key plant species and genetic factors that influence uptake.

2024 Environmental science and pollution research international
Article Tier 2

Nanoplastics and Microplastics in Agricultural Systems: Effects on Plants and Implications for Human Consumption

This review summarizes existing research on how nanoplastics and microplastics enter agricultural soil through irrigation, plastic mulch, and sewage sludge, then accumulate in crops that people eat. The particles can also carry other harmful substances like pesticides and heavy metals into plants, raising concerns about long-term health effects from chronic dietary exposure.

2025 Microplastics 12 citations
Article Tier 2

Waterborne contaminants in high intensity agriculture and plant production: A review of on-site and downstream impacts.

This review examined waterborne contaminants—including microplastics, pathogens, and agrochemicals—affecting plant production nurseries that rely on recycled irrigation water. It identified key on-site and off-site contamination risks and proposed management strategies to safeguard water quality in high-intensity plant production systems.

2025 The Science of the total environment
Article Tier 2

Uptake and transport of micro/nanoplastics in terrestrial plants: Detection, mechanisms, and influencing factors

This review summarizes how micro and nanoplastics enter and move through plants, including uptake through roots and leaves via processes like endocytosis and movement through cell walls. Smaller particles penetrate more easily, and factors like surface charge and soil conditions affect how much plastic plants absorb. The findings are important because they show that crops can take up microplastics from contaminated soil, creating a potential pathway for these particles to reach the human diet.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 166 citations