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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Plastics: the big environmental problem of our time
ClearPervasive Pollution Problems Caused by Plastics and its Degradation
This review discusses the pervasive environmental pollution caused by plastics and their degradation products, arguing that plastic contamination now affects air, water, food, and all living organisms and requires urgent global action to reduce production and improve waste management.
Microplastic Pollution in the Environment
This review examines the ubiquitous presence of microplastics as emerging environmental pollutants across all major environmental compartments, synthesizing data on their sources, fates, and concentrations over time and space to characterize the scale of global contamination.
Microplastics: Environmental Issues and Their Management
This review covers the environmental hazards of microplastics, their accumulation in soils, water bodies, and living organisms, and management strategies for reducing plastic waste. Global plastic production has grown from 2 million tons in 1950 to 380 million tons annually, with much ending up as persistent environmental pollution.
Driver, Trends and Fate of Plastics and Micro Plastics Occurrence in the Environment
This review examines the sources, trends, and environmental fate of plastics and microplastics, which have become a major global pollution problem due to massive production and poor waste management. Understanding how plastics move through the environment is essential for designing effective pollution controls.
Global environmental problem of microplastics
This paper provides an overview of microplastic pollution as a growing global environmental problem, examining how tiny plastic particles spread through ecosystems worldwide. It highlights the scale of the challenge and the need for coordinated scientific and policy responses.
Characteristics of Plastic Pollution in the Environment: A Review.
This review covers the key characteristics of plastic pollution — including sources, abundance, transport, and degradation — across different environmental compartments. It synthesizes knowledge about what makes plastic pollution persistent and widespread, providing a foundation for understanding microplastic formation and behavior in the environment.
The Devastation of Waste Plastic on the Environment and Remediation Processes: A Critical Review
This review covers the full scope of plastic waste pollution, from sources and environmental damage to recycling and remediation strategies. It ranks common plastic polymers by the toxicity of their chemical building blocks and traces how plastic waste enters the environment. The review highlights that as plastics break down into microplastics, they become harder to clean up and more likely to enter the food chain, making prevention and recycling critical for reducing human exposure.
Plastic pollution in the marine environment
This review provides a comprehensive overview of plastic pollution in coastal and marine environments, covering everything from how plastics enter the ocean to their effects on marine life. Researchers compiled global data showing microplastic concentrations ranging widely across different water bodies and sediments, with marine organisms accumulating significant amounts. The study underscores that plastic pollution causes ecological damage through entanglement, ingestion toxicity, and the transport of invasive species.
Plastic Pollution: Challenges and Innovative Solutions
This review examines the multifaceted challenges of plastic pollution and surveys innovative solutions spanning material design, waste management, and remediation technologies. The paper synthesises current research on microplastic sources, environmental persistence, and emerging approaches to reducing plastic releases into ecosystems.
Plastic and the Environment
This chapter reviews the environmental challenges posed by plastic waste, covering the history and properties of plastics, the problems of plastic pollution, and the complexities of plastic recycling including hazardous substance propagation in electronics recycling streams.
Microplastic in the Marine Environment
This review examines the presence, sources, distribution, and ecological effects of microplastics in marine environments, arguing that the pervasive use of plastics in modern society and poor waste management have made ocean microplastic pollution a critical global issue.
Plastic Pollution and its Impact on Environment
This overview of plastic pollution from 1950 to 2021 estimates that approximately 6.3 billion tons of plastics have been produced globally, with only 9% recycled, while continued population growth and consumption drive mounting environmental accumulation. The study links plastic pollution trajectories to public health, ecosystem, and regulatory challenges.
Plastic pollution: why is it a public health problem?
This commentary argues that plastic pollution is a public health problem due to the widespread human exposure to microplastics and plastic-associated chemicals, calling for regulatory action to address the full lifecycle of plastics including production, use, and disposal.
Plastic Waste: Current Environmental Pollution, Health Hazard and Biodegradation Strategies and Its Management
This review paper surveys the scope of global plastic pollution, covering environmental contamination, health hazards, and biodegradation strategies. The study highlights that with plastic production exceeding 390 million tons by 2021, effective waste management and biodegradation approaches are urgently needed to address microplastic accumulation.
From Plastics to Microplastics: Quantification, Degradation and Mitigation
This book chapter reviews how plastics break down into microplastics, the methods used to detect and quantify them, and their environmental impacts including their ability to adsorb and concentrate other pollutants. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the microplastics problem from production to environmental harm.
Current research trends on micro- and nano-plastics as an emerging threat to global environment: A review.
This review summarizes the current knowledge on micro- and nanoplastics as emerging global pollutants, covering their distribution across terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric environments, their persistence, and the health risks from their chemical additives. It identifies key research gaps in understanding how MNPs move between environmental compartments and accumulate in living organisms.
Plastic Footprint
This review discussed the global scale of plastic pollution—approximately 400 million tons of waste generated annually—and examined how plastics degrade into micro- and nanoplastics that accumulate in the food chain, climate system, and human body.
Polymers and Microplastics: Implications on Our Environment and Sustainability
This review discusses the environmental implications of polymers and microplastics, covering their properties, production trends, degradation pathways, and ecological impacts. It highlights the tension between the industrial utility of plastics and their growing threat to environmental and human health.
Current Microplastic Scenario and Its Adverse Effects on the Ecosystem
This review summarizes the current global distribution of microplastics across marine, freshwater, terrestrial, and remote environments, and examines evidence for their ingestion by a wide range of organisms and their role in transporting co-contaminants such as chemical additives and sorbed pollutants. The authors conclude that preventing plastic release at source -- particularly from large plastic items that fragment into microplastics -- remains the most practical remediation strategy.
On the issue of microplastics in the environment
This paper examines the origins of microplastic pollution, arguing that its emergence is not solely attributable to polymer chemistry advances and cannot be explained simply by physicochemical degradation processes acting on plastic materials.
Big molecules that do not go away
This essay explores how modern society has become as dependent on synthetic polymers ('plastics') as living organisms are on biopolymers like proteins and cellulose, examining the ubiquity of plastics in daily life and the challenges posed by their persistence in the environment.
Microplastics and Nanoplastics in the Environment
This book chapter introduces the growing problem of microplastics and nanoplastics in the environment, covering their origins, distribution, and potential impacts. Plastics have transformed modern life but now accumulate throughout ecosystems and the food chain, raising broad environmental and health concerns that are the subject of rapidly growing scientific investigation.
Plastic Pollution and Its Alternatives
This presentation reviewed the scale of plastic pollution, focusing on how plastics accumulate in oceans as non-biodegradable microplastics and nanoplastics that contaminate ecosystems and food chains. The authors outlined alternative materials and policy interventions as pathways to reduce plastic's environmental footprint.
Plastic Pollution and Its Alternatives
This presentation reviewed the scale of plastic pollution, focusing on how plastics accumulate in oceans as non-biodegradable microplastics and nanoplastics that contaminate ecosystems and food chains. The authors outlined alternative materials and policy interventions as pathways to reduce plastic's environmental footprint.