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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Microplastics in Aquatic Systems: Dual Roles as Pollutant Carriers and Emerging Functional Materials for Water Treatment
ClearSource, transport, and toxicity of emerging contaminants in aquatic environments: A review on recent studies
This review examines emerging contaminants in water, with a focus on how microplastics act as carriers for other pollutants due to their strong ability to absorb chemicals. When microplastics carry these hitchhiking pollutants, the combined effect on aquatic organisms can be amplified thousands of times as they move up the food chain. The findings highlight how microplastic pollution does not just add plastic to the environment but also concentrates and transports other harmful chemicals toward humans.
Microplastics as vectors of contaminants
This review highlights the emerging role of microplastics as carriers of biological and chemical contaminants in water environments. Researchers note that while microplastic pollution is increasingly well-documented, the interactions between contaminants adsorbed onto microplastic surfaces and aquatic organisms remain poorly understood. The study stresses the need for further investigation into how microplastics may facilitate the transport and bioavailability of pollutants.
Microplastics in Surface Waters: A Critical Review of Emerging Challenges and Future Perspectives
This review examines microplastic contamination across aquatic environments, covering detection technologies, ecological risks from ingestion by wildlife and transfer through food webs, and how microplastics serve as vectors for pesticides, heavy metals, and chemical pollutants.
Degradable Microplastics as Vector of Emergent Contaminants in Wastewater: Interactions and Mechanisms of Adsorption
Degradable microplastics in wastewater can act as carriers for pesticides and other contaminants, adsorbing them from the surrounding water and potentially releasing them again in different environmental conditions such as aeration tanks. This 'Trojan horse' behavior is concerning because microplastics may transport pollutants through wastewater treatment systems that were not designed to capture these combined threats.
Microplastics with adsorbed contaminants: Mechanisms and Treatment
This review examines how microplastics adsorb environmental contaminants including heavy metals, organic pollutants, and pathogens, and surveys treatment methods for removing contaminated microplastics from water. Researchers found that microplastics can act as vectors for hazardous substances, potentially increasing their bioavailability and toxicity in aquatic ecosystems. The study evaluates emerging remediation technologies and highlights the complex environmental risks posed by microplastics carrying adsorbed pollutants.
Adsorption of Pollutants on Microplastics in Freshwater
This book chapter examines adsorption of co-contaminants—including heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals—onto microplastic surfaces in freshwater environments, reviewing how plastic particle characteristics determine their capacity to concentrate and transport associated pollutants.
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.
Microplastic Pollution Focused on Sources, Distribution, Contaminant Interactions, Analytical Methods, and Wastewater Removal Strategies: A Review
This review examines microplastic pollution across all environmental compartments, covering sources, distribution, contaminant interactions, analytical methods, and wastewater removal strategies. Microplastics act as vectors for pesticides, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, PCBs, and PAHs, and the review discusses both the analytical challenges of detection and available treatment options.
Microplastics and environmental pollutants: Key interaction and toxicology in aquatic and soil environments
This review tracks how microplastics move through soil, water, and air ecosystems, acting as carriers for other pollutants like pesticides and heavy metals. When microplastics absorb these toxins, the combined effect on organisms can be worse than either pollutant alone. The paper highlights the need for better understanding of how these pollutant combinations affect ecosystems and ultimately human health through contaminated food and water.
The Dual Role of Microplastics in Marine Environment: Sink and Vectors of Pollutants
This review examines the dual role of microplastics in the marine environment as both accumulators of persistent organic pollutants and vectors that transport these chemicals and other contaminants including heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and pathogens. The study highlights how microplastics can concentrate toxic substances from seawater and then release them when ingested by marine organisms, creating additional exposure pathways.
Microplastics as vectors of chemical contaminants and biological agents in freshwater ecosystems: Current knowledge status and future perspectives
This review examines how microplastics in freshwater ecosystems act as carriers for chemical pollutants and harmful microorganisms. Researchers found that pollutant concentrations on microplastic surfaces can be up to six times higher than in surrounding water, amplifying exposure risks for aquatic life and potentially humans. The findings highlight that microplastics are not just a pollution problem themselves but also a vehicle that spreads other contaminants through the food web.
Fate of microplastics and emerging contaminants: Mechanisms of interactions, bioaccumulation and combined toxicity to aquatic organisms
This review summarizes how microplastics interact with other emerging contaminants in water, finding that microplastics can absorb pollutants at concentrations up to a million times higher than surrounding water and carry them into living organisms. The combined toxicity of microplastics plus these hitchhiking chemicals is often greater than either alone, and these pollutants can reach humans through the food chain.
Transport of persistent organic pollutants: Another effect of microplastic pollution?
This review examines how microplastics act as vectors for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in aquatic environments, covering the physical and chemical factors governing pollutant adsorption and desorption. The authors discuss how interactions between microplastics and POPs vary with polymer type, particle properties, and environmental conditions, and when these interactions may result in toxic effects on aquatic organisms.
Micro(nano)plastics: Unignorable vectors for organisms
This review examines the role of micro- and nanoplastics as vectors for contaminants — including heavy metals, organic pollutants, and pathogens — in aquatic and terrestrial environments. It synthesizes evidence on how plastic particles can adsorb, transport, and release harmful substances, amplifying their ecological and health risks beyond the physical effects of the particles alone.
Microplastics as vectors of organic pollutants in aquatic environment: A review on mechanisms, numerical models, and influencing factors
This review examines how microplastics act as carriers for organic pollutants in water, adsorbing chemicals like pesticides and pharmaceuticals onto their surfaces and transporting them through aquatic environments. Researchers analyzed the mechanisms behind this process, including hydrophobic interactions and surface adsorption, along with the mathematical models used to predict pollutant uptake. The study highlights that microplastics may amplify the environmental impact of other contaminants by concentrating and redistributing them.
Microplastics (MPs) Act as Sources and Vector of Pollutants‐Impact Hazards and Preventive Measures
This review explores how microplastics can act both as sources of chemical substances and as carriers for other environmental pollutants. Researchers found that regardless of which role microplastics play, the combined presence of plastic particles and attached chemical substances can have harmful effects on biological systems, though more experimental research is needed to fully understand these interactions.
Interaction of Chemical Contaminants with Microplastics
This review examines how chemical contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals adsorb onto microplastic surfaces and are transported through the environment. Microplastics act as vectors that concentrate and move toxic chemicals, potentially amplifying human exposure through food and water.
Marine microplastics as vectors of major ocean pollutants and its hazards to the marine ecosystem and humans
Researchers reviewed how microplastics in the ocean act as "hitchhikers" for other pollutants — absorbing and carrying heavy metals, pesticides, and chemicals into marine food webs and ultimately toward humans. While direct proof of microplastic harm to humans is still limited, the accumulated evidence of toxic chemical transport through seafood and drinking water raises serious concern.
Polyamide and polyethylene terephthalate microplastics as vectors of contaminants in aquatic systems
This thesis examined how polyamide and polyethylene terephthalate microplastics serve as vectors for other contaminants — such as pesticides and heavy metals — in aquatic systems in Brazil.
Effect of microplastics on the environmental behavior of emerging contaminants in aquatic matrices
This study examines how microplastics affect the environmental behavior of emerging contaminants in aquatic systems. Microplastics can adsorb other pollutants and alter their bioavailability, potentially increasing or decreasing toxic effects depending on the chemicals and environmental conditions.
Partitioning of chemical contaminants to microplastics: Sorption mechanisms, environmental distribution and effects on toxicity and bioaccumulation
This review critically examines how chemical contaminants like persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals sorb onto microplastic surfaces in the environment. Researchers found that while microplastics can concentrate pollutants at levels far above surrounding water, the actual contribution of microplastics to contaminant transfer into organisms may be less significant than direct exposure from water and food. The study calls for more realistic experimental designs to clarify the true risk.
Research progress on environmental occurrence of microplastics and their interaction mechanism with organic pollutants
This review summarizes how microplastics in the environment interact with organic pollutants—adsorbing, carrying, and releasing them. Microplastics act as mobile carriers for persistent organic chemicals, altering their distribution and toxicity in ecosystems and the organisms, including humans, that consume them.
Microplastic interactions with co-existing pollutants in water environments: Synergistic or antagonistic roles on their removal through current remediation technologies
This review examines how microplastics interact with other pollutants like heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals in water, often making each contaminant harder to remove during treatment. The interactions between microplastics and co-existing pollutants can produce unpredictable combined toxic effects that are worse than either pollutant alone. Understanding these interactions is important because real-world water contamination involves mixtures, not single pollutants, and current treatment methods may not adequately address these combinations.
Association of hazardous compounds with microplastics in freshwater ecosystems
This book chapter reviews how hazardous chemical compounds — including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and heavy metals — associate with microplastics in freshwater ecosystems. Microplastics act as carriers for these compounds, potentially increasing their bioavailability to aquatic organisms and complicating risk assessment.