Papers

61,005 results
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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

Impacts of microplastics on terrestrial plants: A critical review

This review examines how microplastics affect land-based plants, finding that they can alter soil structure, disrupt beneficial soil microbes, and reduce plant growth. Microplastics also carry toxic chemicals like plasticizers and heavy metals that can be taken up by plant roots and enter the food chain. The findings raise concerns about human health since contaminated crops could be a hidden source of microplastic and chemical exposure in our diets.

2024 Land Degradation and Development 23 citations
Article Tier 2

Source, fate, toxicity, and remediation of micro-plastic in wetlands: A critical review

Researchers reviewed how microplastics enter, accumulate in, and damage natural wetlands — ecosystems that filter water and support biodiversity — finding that while wetlands may actually trap plastic particles like a sink, the resulting contamination poses serious ecological risks that are still poorly understood.

2024 Watershed Ecology and the Environment 13 citations
Article Tier 2

What influences microplastic trapping in coastal marshes? Exploring vegetation diversity as a driver of accumulation

This study explored how the diversity of plant species in coastal marshes influences how many microplastics get trapped there, finding that vegetation composition is a meaningful driver of plastic accumulation. Coastal marshes act as natural filters catching plastic before it reaches the open ocean, so understanding what makes them more or less effective has implications for both conservation and plastic pollution management.

2026 Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Article Tier 2

What influences microplastic trapping in coastal marshes? Exploring vegetation diversity as a driver of accumulation

This study explored how the diversity of plant species in coastal marshes influences how many microplastics get trapped there, finding that vegetation composition is a meaningful driver of plastic accumulation. Coastal marshes act as natural filters catching plastic before it reaches the open ocean, so understanding what makes them more or less effective has implications for both conservation and plastic pollution management.

2026 Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Article Tier 2

A vegetation strategy to balance the hazardous level of microplastics in the land–sea interface through rhizosphere remediation

Researchers reviewed how plants — especially aquatic plants in coastal wetlands and estuaries — can trap and break down microplastics through their root systems and surrounding soil microbes, a process called phytoremediation. Aquatic plants show particular promise because their roots are constantly submerged in contaminated water, giving them more exposure and capture potential than land-based crops.

2024 Ecological Indicators 5 citations
Article Tier 2

Unraveling the toxic mechanisms of microplastics in aquatic ecosystem: A case study on Vallisneria natans and Myriophyllum verticillatum

Researchers exposed two submerged aquatic plant species (Vallisneria natans and Myriophyllum verticillatum) to PVC, polystyrene, and polyethylene microplastics at three concentrations, finding that all three types significantly inhibited photosynthesis and growth and triggered oxidative stress, with effects varying by plastic type and plant species.

2025 Environmental Pollution 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics: toxicity and tolerance in plants

Researchers reviewed how microplastics harm both land plants and water plants by disrupting their growth, nutrient uptake, and genetic function, while also triggering the plants' own defense systems in response. Understanding how plants tolerate microplastic exposure is important because contaminated crops could eventually affect human health through the food chain.

2024 Microplastics
Review Tier 2

Microplastics: a review of their impacts on different life forms and their removal methods

This review provides a broad overview of how microplastics affect different forms of life, from soil organisms and plants to aquatic species and humans. Researchers found that the primary harmful mechanisms involve oxidative stress, immune disruption, and interference with nutrient uptake and photosynthesis. The study also covers various removal methods including coagulation, membrane filtration, and biological degradation approaches.

2023 Environmental Science and Pollution Research 24 citations
Article Tier 2

Planting Enhances Soil Resistance to Microplastics: Evidence from Carbon Emissions and Dissolved Organic Matter Stability

Researchers found that growing plants in soil contaminated with microplastics helped protect the soil ecosystem compared to unplanted soil. The root systems of plants stabilized the soil's microbial communities and reduced the carbon emissions caused by microplastic pollution, suggesting that maintaining plant cover could be one strategy to limit the environmental damage from microplastics in farmland.

2024 Environmental Science & Technology 24 citations
Article Tier 2

Potential synergy of microplastics and nitrogen enrichment on plant holobionts in wetland ecosystems

This review explores how microplastics and excess nitrogen fertilizer may work together to harm wetland plant health by disrupting the beneficial microbes that live on and around plant roots. The combination could accelerate microplastic breakdown while simultaneously weakening plant defenses and nutrient cycling. Since wetlands help filter water that people use, damage to these ecosystems could indirectly affect water quality and human health.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 24 citations
Article Tier 2

Plant-driven strategies for mitigating microplastic pollution in agricultural ecosystems

Researchers review how microplastics damage agricultural soils and crops — disrupting soil structure, starving plants of nutrients, and triggering oxidative stress — and explore plant- and microbe-based strategies like root-associated bacteria and biochar amendments as promising but underexplored tools for cleaning up plastic-contaminated farmland.

2025 Hygiene and Environmental Health Advances
Article Tier 2

Microplastic residues in wetland ecosystems: Do they truly threaten the plant-microbe-soil system?

Researchers used a controlled pot experiment to assess microplastic effects on wetland plant growth, soil microbial communities, and nutrient cycling, finding that MPs altered soil enzyme activity and shifted bacterial community composition but had variable effects on plant growth depending on plastic type.

2021 Environment International 238 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics as emerging stressors in plants: biochemical and metabolic responses

This review examines how microplastics act as environmental stressors in plants, disrupting biochemical and metabolic processes including photosynthesis, antioxidant defenses, and nutrient uptake, with effects varying by polymer type, particle size, and concentration.

2025 Environmental Geochemistry and Health
Article Tier 2

Impact of microplastics on aquatic flora: Recent status, mechanisms of their toxicity and bioremediation strategies

This review examines how microplastics affect aquatic plants, from microscopic algae to larger vegetation, by physically blocking sunlight and pores and disrupting photosynthesis, reproduction, and nutrient uptake. Prolonged exposure triggers excessive production of harmful reactive oxygen species in plant cells, which can lead to cell death. The authors also highlight bioremediation approaches, including certain plants and microorganisms that can adsorb or break down microplastics by 25 to 80 percent in laboratory settings.

2024 Chemosphere 8 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
Review Tier 2

Unveiling the mechanism of micro-and-nano plastic phytotoxicity on terrestrial plants: A comprehensive review of omics approaches.

This comprehensive review examined how micro-and-nano plastics (MNPs) in terrestrial soils damage plant health by inhibiting water and nutrient uptake, reducing seed germination, impairing photosynthesis, and inducing oxidative stress. The review identified key knowledge gaps in understanding MNP phytotoxicity mechanisms and their implications for food security.

2025 Environment international
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
Article Tier 2

Seagrass under siege: Investigating microplastic effects on seagrass ecosystems

Researchers reviewed the effects of microplastics on seagrass meadows, which are ecologically critical habitats that also trap and accumulate particulate matter. Evidence suggests microplastics can impair seagrass growth, root function, and associated fauna in these vulnerable ecosystems.

2024 Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Article Tier 2

Tiny pollutants, big consequences: investigating the influence of nano- and microplastics on soil properties and plant health with mitigation strategies

Researchers reviewed the impact of nanoplastics and microplastics on soil properties and plant health, examining absorption and translocation mechanisms in plants. The study suggests that plastic particles alter soil structure and microbial communities, impair plant growth and nutrient uptake, and proposes mitigation strategies to address these emerging threats to agricultural ecosystems.

2025 Environmental Science Processes & Impacts 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Non-negligible impact of microplastics on wetland ecosystems

This review examines microplastic pollution in wetland ecosystems, which sit between land and water and act as natural filters. Microplastics in wetlands come from sewage, agricultural runoff, and atmospheric deposition, with polyethylene and polypropylene fibers and fragments being the most common types found. The paper highlights that microplastics can harm wetland plants, animals, and microbes, and may even increase greenhouse gas emissions by serving as an unusual carbon source for soil microorganisms.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 22 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic Pollution: An Emerging Threat to Terrestrial Plants and Insights into Its Remediation Strategies

This review highlights the emerging threat of microplastic pollution to terrestrial plants and agroecosystems, summarizing sources, interactions with soil and crops, and potential remediation strategies for safe agricultural practices.

2022 Plants 82 citations
Article Tier 2

Role of saltmarsh systems in estuarine trapping of microplastics

Researchers found that saltmarsh vegetation significantly enhances the trapping of microplastics in estuarine sediments compared to adjacent bare mudflats, suggesting that these coastal ecosystems act as important sinks for plastic pollution under tidal flow conditions.

2022 Scientific Reports 34 citations
Article Tier 2

Seagrass under siege: Investigating microplastic effects on seagrass ecosystems

Researchers reviewed the current evidence for microplastic effects on seagrass meadows, covering physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms of harm. The review found that microplastics impair seagrass photosynthesis, root function, and associated fauna, threatening these ecologically critical coastal habitats.

2024 Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)