Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Impact of Microplastics on the Environment and Its Mitigation

This review examines the environmental and biological hazards of microplastics across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, covering their classification as fibers, flakes, fragments, granules, and spheres, their capacity to carry toxic chemicals, and their sorption-desorption dynamics. The authors identify significant gaps in analytical methodology and biological impact data, calling for novel mitigation strategies to address the long-term ecological risks of this emerging contaminant.

2024
Article Tier 2

Properties and Related Effects of Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment: From the Organismic to Cellular Level

This review covers the properties of microplastics in aquatic environments — including polymer chemistry, particle size, shape, and surface charge — and how these characteristics determine their biological effects from the cellular to organismal level in aquatic organisms.

2025
Article Tier 2

Health impacts of micro- and nanoplastics: key influencing factors, limitations, and future perspectives

This review systematically analyzed how the physicochemical properties of micro- and nanoplastics — including size, shape, surface charge, and polymer type — determine their toxicological impacts across biological systems. The authors argue that property-based frameworks are essential for predicting MNP health risks and designing relevant research.

2025 Archives of Toxicology
Article Tier 2

Microplastics in the Environment

This book chapter reviews the sources, distribution, fate, and transport of microplastics across terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric environments. Key topics include the ability of microplastics to adsorb persistent organic pollutants and bioaccumulate through food chains, as well as the physicochemical properties that govern their environmental behavior.

2025
Article Tier 2

Why Microplastics Are Exceptional Contaminants?

This review examined why microplastics are exceptional contaminants, explaining how their diverse polymers, sizes, shapes, and colors create complex environmental behavior affecting mobility, bioavailability, and ecological impacts across different compartments.

2023 Environmental sciences 10 citations
Article Tier 2

Role of Structural Morphology of Commodity Polymers in Microplastics and Nanoplastics Formation: Fragmentation, Effects and Associated Toxicity in the Aquatic Environment

This review examines how the structural morphology and chemical composition of commodity polymers influence the formation and environmental behaviour of microplastics and nanoplastics, arguing that chemical degradation pathways have been largely overlooked in favour of purely physical abrasion explanations for plastic fragmentation.

2021 Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 9 citations
Article Tier 2

New insights in to the environmental behavior and ecological toxicity of microplastics

This review provides new insights into how microplastics behave in the environment and their toxic effects on living organisms. Microplastics can absorb and carry other pollutants, making them more dangerous than the plastic alone, and their effects vary based on size, shape, and chemical composition. The review highlights that smaller particles, especially nanoplastics, pose the greatest risk because they can cross biological barriers and enter cells.

2023 Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances 80 citations
Article Tier 2

Current understanding of microplastics in the environment: Occurrence, fate, risks, and what we should do

This review synthesizes current knowledge on microplastic occurrence, environmental fate, and risk across marine, freshwater, and atmospheric compartments, noting that both the physical particles and the chemicals they carry pose hazards. The authors call for a more integrated risk assessment framework that treats microplastics as both a pollutant and a carrier of other pollutants.

2017 Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management 262 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic properties and their interaction with hydrophobic organic contaminants: a review

This review examines the physical and chemical properties of microplastics that determine how they interact with hydrophobic organic contaminants in the environment. Researchers found that factors like polymer type, particle size, weathering, and surface chemistry all influence how strongly microplastics bind to co-occurring pollutants. The findings suggest that microplastics can serve as carriers for harmful chemicals, potentially increasing exposure risks for organisms that ingest them.

2022 Environmental Science and Pollution Research 169 citations
Article Tier 2

Behavior and Bio-Interactions of Anthropogenic Particles in Marine Environment for a More Realistic Ecological Risk Assessment

This review examines how anthropogenic nanoparticles — including plastic fragments and engineered nanomaterials — behave in marine environments and interact with biology, arguing for more realistic multi-stressor exposure conditions in ecological risk assessment.

2020 Frontiers in Environmental Science 100 citations
Article Tier 2

olYours iReview on microplastic-polymer composite interactions: Assessing contaminant adsorption, structural integrity, and environmental impacts

This review examines how microplastics interact with polymer composites, focusing on contaminant adsorption mechanisms, effects on composite structural integrity, and the broader environmental implications of plastic-pollutant interactions in ecosystems.

2025 Communication in Physical Sciences
Article Tier 2

The Emergence, Chemical Nature, Classification, and Properties of Microplastics

This book chapter examines the origins, chemical nature, classification, and physical and chemical properties of microplastics, covering their formation from larger plastic breakdown and their categorization into primary and secondary types. The authors link microplastic properties such as hydrophobicity, high surface area, and adsorption capacity to their role as vectors for chemical pollutants in ecosystems.

2024 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics: From Intrinsic Properties to Environmental Fate

This review examines how the built-in properties of plastics — their chemical structure, additives, and molecular weight — determine how quickly they break down in the environment and what happens when they do. As microplastics degrade, they fragment into even smaller particles that may be more harmful because they can more easily enter living organisms. Understanding these degradation pathways is essential for predicting the long-term environmental and health risks of plastic pollution.

2024 Environmental Engineering Science 12 citations
Article Tier 2

Challenges and Strategies for Degradation of Microplastics in Environment

This review examines the challenges of degrading microplastics in environmental settings, discussing their hydrophobic nature, persistent covalent bonds, and large specific surface area that attracts co-contaminants, and surveys physical, chemical, and biological degradation strategies alongside remaining technical hurdles to practical implementation.

2024
Article Tier 2

Microplastic Pollution in the Environment

This book chapter provides an overview of microplastic and nanoplastic pollution as emerging environmental contaminants, describing their formation, persistence in the environment, pathways of biological exposure, and potential toxicity to ecosystems and human health.

2025
Article Tier 2

Multiple Effects, Pathways, and Potential Health Risks from Environmental Microplastic Exposure

This review synthesizes nearly two decades of research on the multiple pathways through which environmental microplastics affect human and ecological health, including chemical toxicity, physical impacts, and potential roles as carriers of pathogens and contaminants.

2025 Toxics
Article Tier 2

Characterisation, quantity and sorptive properties of microplastics extracted from cosmetics

Researchers extracted microplastics from a specific environmental matrix and characterized their properties — including size, shape, polymer type, and sorption capacity — providing insights into the physical and chemical behavior of environmentally weathered particles.

2015 Marine Pollution Bulletin 935 citations
Article Tier 2

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.

2024 Tovaroved prodovolstvennykh tovarov (Commodity specialist of food products)
Article Tier 2

Recent advances in research from plastic materials to microplastics

This review traced recent advances in understanding plastic material degradation into microplastics, covering mechanical, photochemical, and biological fragmentation pathways and reviewing current knowledge on environmental fate and biological effects.

2024 Zastita materijala 1 citations
Review Tier 2

Physisorption and Chemisorption Mechanisms Influencing Micro (Nano) Plastics-Organic Chemical Contaminants Interactions: A Review

This review explains the chemical and physical mechanisms by which microplastics attract and carry organic pollutants like pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals in the environment. The ability of microplastics to absorb these contaminants depends on factors like plastic type, particle size, weathering, and water conditions. Understanding these interactions is critical because when contaminated microplastics are ingested by organisms or humans, the absorbed chemicals can be released inside the body.

2021 Frontiers in Environmental Science 295 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics and Their Impacts on Organisms and Trophic Chains

This review synthesizes current knowledge on microplastic pollution, examining the mechanisms by which microplastics affect organisms at multiple levels of biological organization and how plastic particles transfer through trophic chains, accumulating and potentially magnifying in concentration up the food web. Researchers highlight evidence for physical, chemical, and microbial impacts on organisms ranging from invertebrates to mammals, including humans, and identify priority areas for future ecotoxicological research.

2022 Water 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics in the environment: analytical chemistry methods, sorption materials, risks and sustainable solutions

This review covers the full picture of microplastic pollution, from how scientists detect and measure these particles to how they carry other pollutants and affect living organisms. The authors highlight that microplastics act as tiny sponges that absorb harmful chemicals like pharmaceuticals and pesticides, then release them inside organisms that ingest the particles. The review calls for more standardized testing methods and sustainable solutions to reduce both microplastic pollution and its risks to human health.

2024 Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry 15 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic and its effects on the environment

This review describes the formation of microplastics as degradation byproducts of plastic materials and examines their environmental distribution and ecological consequences, with a focus on physical, chemical, and biological removal methods from water and sediment. The authors also describe protocols for collecting, processing, and analyzing microplastic samples in aquatic environments.

2024 Repository of the University of Rijeka Library
Article Tier 2

Microplastics â Part 1: Dynamics of pollution by microplastics

Researchers reviewed how microplastics — tiny plastic fragments produced as larger plastics break down — spread through and disrupt ecosystems, affecting soil, water, plants, aquatic organisms, and microorganisms. Key factors like particle size, shape, concentration, and chemical composition all influence how harmful microplastics are to living systems.

2024 Journal of Science with Technological Applications