Papers

61,005 results
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Review Tier 2

Heavy Metal Pollution in Coastal Environments: Ecological Implications and Management Strategies: A Review

This review examines heavy metal pollution in coastal environments, covering sources like industrial runoff and agriculture, ecological impacts, and cleanup strategies. While focused on heavy metals rather than microplastics, it is relevant because microplastics often carry heavy metals on their surface, potentially increasing human exposure to these toxic substances through the food chain.

2025 Sustainability 108 citations
Article Tier 2

Sources, effects and present perspectives of heavy metals contamination: soil, plants and human food chain

This review summarizes how heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and arsenic contaminate soil, get absorbed by crops, and enter the human food chain. Heavy metals at high levels can damage plant growth and accumulate in food at concentrations unsafe for human consumption. This is relevant to microplastics research because microplastics in soil can bind and transport heavy metals, potentially increasing the amount that ends up in the food we eat.

2023 30 citations
Article Tier 2

Environmental Food Contaminants and Control Recommendations

This review outlines the sources, types, and health risks of environmental food contaminants including microplastics, pesticides, and heavy metals, and provides practical control recommendations. The authors emphasize monitoring systems and improved agricultural practices as key strategies for reducing contamination.

2024 Journal of Biomedical Research & Environmental Sciences 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Contaminants in Agriculture and Environment: Health Risks and Remediation

This book chapter reviewed contaminants in agricultural environments and their health risks, covering heavy metals, pesticides, and emerging pollutants including microplastics, and summarizing remediation strategies for both soil and crop systems. The authors discuss the intersection of food security and environmental contamination in modern agricultural production systems.

2019 Agro Environ Media - Agriculture and Ennvironmental Science Academy, Haridwar, India eBooks 86 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic-mediated environmental behavior of metal contaminants: mechanism and implication

This review examines how microplastics interact with heavy metals across water, soil, and air environments, acting as carriers that concentrate and transport toxic metals. Researchers found that microplastics can increase the bioavailability and toxicity of metal contaminants to living organisms. The study highlights major gaps in current analytical methods and calls for better tools to understand these complex pollutant interactions.

2024 Environmental Science and Pollution Research 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Assessment of soil microplastics: An overview on toxicity, effects on heavy metals adsorption, solid-phase extraction, and detection techniques

This review examined how microplastics in soil enter the food chain and pose human health risks, with particular attention to their role as carriers for heavy metals. Agricultural practices like plastic mulching and sewage sludge application were identified as major sources of soil MP contamination.

2025 Sustainable Environment
Article Tier 2

Microplastics in Food Products

This chapter reviews microplastic contamination in food products, tracing the pathways by which plastic particles enter the food supply from environmental contamination, packaging leaching, and food processing. The authors discuss health concerns associated with dietary microplastic exposure and the regulatory landscape around food safety.

2024
Article Tier 2

Interaction of microplastics with heavy metals in soil: Mechanisms, influencing factors and biological effects

This review summarizes how microplastics and heavy metals interact in soil, where microplastics can absorb and carry toxic metals through the food chain and into the human body. Aging and weathering of microplastics changes their surface properties, making them better at picking up heavy metals, which raises concerns about combined exposure through contaminated crops and water.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 96 citations
Article Tier 2

Emerging Threat of Food Contamination by Microplastics and its Influence on Safety and Human Perspective

Researchers reviewed how widespread plastic use across industry has made microplastic contamination of food a serious public health concern, with particles entering the food supply through environmental pathways including runoff, wastewater, and air. Addressing this threat requires tighter regulations, better food supply monitoring, and public education on exposure risks.

2025 International Journal of Advanced Science and Engineering
Article Tier 2

Bioaccumulation and Bioremediation of Heavy Metals in Fishes—A Review

This review summarizes how heavy metals accumulate in fish tissues through contaminated water and enter the human food chain, posing serious public health concerns. The paper discusses bioremediation techniques using microorganisms and other methods to remove heavy metals from aquatic environments, which is relevant because microplastics can carry and concentrate these same toxic metals.

2023 Toxics 161 citations
Article Tier 2

Environmental Contamination and Food Chain Bioaccumulation

This review examines how environmental contaminants, including heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and emerging pollutants like micro- and nanoplastics, accumulate through food chains via bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Researchers describe the diverse pathways by which these contaminants enter ecosystems from agricultural runoff, industrial discharge, and waste disposal. The study underscores that continuous human exposure to bioaccumulated toxins may contribute to chronic health concerns.

2025 1 citations
Article Tier 2

A Retrospection on Mercury Contamination, Bioaccumulation, and Toxicity in Diverse Environments: Current Insights and Future Prospects

This review examines mercury contamination in the environment, its accumulation in the food chain, and its toxic effects on living organisms. Mercury exposure through contaminated crops and seafood can cause cancer, genetic damage, and disruption of enzymes and proteins in the body. While focused on mercury rather than microplastics, the research is relevant because microplastics can absorb and transport mercury and other heavy metals into organisms.

2023 Sustainability 64 citations
Article Tier 2

Trace Metals in the Environment

This book summarizes research on trace metals including heavy metals in the environment, covering their effects on soil, water, plants, and human health. It also discusses how microplastics accumulate trace metals and spread them through oceans, harming aquatic life and potentially entering the human food chain. The connection between microplastics and heavy metal transport is an important emerging concern for both environmental and human health.

2023 IntechOpen eBooks 37 citations
Review Tier 2

Food Contaminants: A Scoping Review of Sources, Toxicity, Pathophysiological Insights, and Mitigation Strategies

This scoping review examines various food contaminants including microplastics, heavy metals, pesticides, and mycotoxins, covering their sources, toxicity, and strategies for mitigation. Researchers synthesized evidence on how these contaminants enter the food supply and their potential effects on human health. The study highlights the growing concern around microplastics as a food contaminant and calls for integrated approaches to food safety monitoring.

2025 Preprints.org 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Interactions and effects of microplastics with heavy metals in aquatic and terrestrial environments

This review explores how microplastics absorb toxic heavy metals from the environment and what happens when organisms ingest these contaminated particles. In the acidic conditions of an animal's digestive system, metals can separate from the plastic and accumulate in body tissues. Since heavy metals can concentrate on microplastics and then transfer up the food chain, this combination poses a compounded health risk to wildlife and potentially to humans who eat contaminated seafood.

2021 Environmental Pollution 546 citations
Review Tier 2

Microplastic contamination in the agricultural soil—mitigation strategies, heavy metals contamination, and impact on human health: a review

This review examines how microplastics contaminate agricultural soil through plastic mulch, irrigation water, and fertilizers, then alter soil chemistry, harm beneficial microorganisms, and reduce crop productivity. The authors highlight that microplastics can accumulate in crops and enter the human food chain, posing risks to food safety and human health, particularly through daily food and water consumption.

2024 Plant Cell Reports 81 citations
Article Tier 2

Environmental Contaminants in Fish Products: Food Safety Issues and Remediation Strategies

This review provides an overview of environmental contaminants found in fish products, including heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and microplastics, and their risks to human health through seafood consumption. The combined presence of multiple contaminants in fish can create compounding toxic effects that are greater than any single pollutant alone. The authors recommend better monitoring and cleanup strategies, including bioremediation, to protect both marine ecosystems and the people who eat seafood.

2024 Foods 10 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

Occurrence and Fate of Emerging Contaminants with Microplastics Current Scenario, Sources and Effects

This review chapter covers the current state of microplastic contamination across marine and terrestrial environments, explaining how microplastics act as vectors for other pollutants — including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and heavy metals — that accumulate on their surfaces. These contaminant-laden particles are consumed by marine organisms and travel up the food chain, reaching human food sources. The work underscores that microplastics are not just a physical hazard but also a chemical delivery system that amplifies the toxic burden on ecosystems and people.

2024 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics in human food chains: Food becoming a threat to health safety

This review traces how microplastics enter the human food chain through both animal and plant sources, food packaging, and beverages. Once consumed, microplastics can accumulate in tissues and release harmful chemicals like plasticizers and heavy metals inside the body. The study emphasizes that food has become a major exposure pathway for microplastics and calls for stricter regulation of plastic use in food production and packaging.

2022 The Science of The Total Environment 542 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic Pollution

This review summarizes the current state of microplastic pollution across water, soil, air, and food, highlighting their ability to carry other toxins like heavy metals and PCBs. The authors note that microplastics accumulate in the food web, moving from the environment into agricultural products and eventually into the human body. The review emphasizes that a unified, comprehensive approach to studying microplastics across all environmental sources is needed to fully understand the health risks.

2025 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Review on the relationship between microplastics and heavy metals in freshwater near mining areas

This review synthesized knowledge on the interaction between microplastics and heavy metals in freshwater environments, covering adsorption mechanisms, combined toxicity, and the role of microplastics as metal vectors. Co-contamination was found to amplify ecological risks beyond what either stressor causes alone.

2024 Environmental Science and Pollution Research 6 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics as Vectors for Metals from Mines and Fuels: Environmental Pathways and Implications

This review examines the environmental pathways by which microplastics act as vectors for metals from mines and fuels, synthesising evidence on contaminant sorption, transport, bioaccumulation, and toxicological implications of metal-microplastic interactions.

2024 Journal of Mines Metals and Fuels 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Influencing mechanisms of microplastics existence on soil heavy metals accumulated by plants

This review summarizes existing research on how microplastics in soil affect the uptake of heavy metals by plants. Microplastics can change soil chemistry and microbial communities in ways that alter how much toxic metals plants absorb through their roots. This is concerning for human health because microplastic-contaminated agricultural soil could lead to crops that contain higher levels of dangerous heavy metals.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 55 citations