Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

A review of important heavy metals toxicity with special emphasis on nephrotoxicity and its management in cattle

This review summarizes how heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium damage kidneys in cattle, building up in the body and food chain over time. Even low doses cause oxidative stress and organ damage that worsens with prolonged exposure. While focused on cattle, the findings are relevant to microplastics research because microplastics can absorb and transport these same heavy metals into animals and humans through contaminated food and water.

2023 Frontiers in Veterinary Science 68 citations
Article Tier 2

Impact of Microplastics and Nanoplastics on Livestock Health: An Emerging Risk for Reproductive Efficiency

This review summarizes the growing evidence that microplastics and nanoplastics harm livestock reproductive systems through oxidative stress, hormone disruption, and organ damage. Farm animals are particularly important because contaminants in their bodies can transfer to humans through meat, milk, and eggs. The review warns that microplastic accumulation in livestock could create a hidden food safety risk through biological amplification up the food chain.

2023 Animals 87 citations
Article Tier 2

Heavy metal toxicity in poultry: a comprehensive review

This review covers how toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury accumulate in poultry through contaminated water, feed, and soil near industrial areas. These metals cause organ damage, reduced egg production, and immune suppression in birds, and can transfer to humans through meat and eggs. The research is relevant to microplastic pollution because microplastics are known to adsorb and transport heavy metals through the food chain.

2023 Frontiers in Veterinary Science 54 citations
Article Tier 2

Presence of Microplastics in Livestock Production: A Challenge for Animal Health and Sustainability

This review examines microplastic contamination in livestock production systems, summarizing evidence of microplastic presence in feed, water, and animal tissues, and discussing implications for animal health, food safety, and sustainability.

2025
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

The evolving interface of aged microplastics and heavy metals: implications for environmental fate and toxicity

This review examined how microplastics interact with heavy metals in the environment, focusing on how plastics serve as carriers that increase metal mobility and bioavailability. Researchers found that factors like polymer aging, biofilm formation, and water chemistry significantly affect how efficiently microplastics absorb metals, and that the combined exposure creates compounded toxicity including oxidative stress and organ damage in organisms. The findings highlight the need for more research on the long-term and multigenerational effects of these combined pollutants.

2026 Environmental Geochemistry and Health 1 citations
Review Tier 2

The sources and impact of microplastic intake on livestock and poultry performance and meat products: a review

This review examined how microplastics affect livestock and poultry health, productivity, and the safety of meat products. Researchers found that while lab experiments show microplastics can cause oxidative stress and inflammation at high concentrations, it remains unclear whether typical environmental exposure levels affect animal welfare or productivity. Microplastics were detected in animal tissues at levels that raise potential consumer safety concerns, though current detection methods are prone to contamination.

2025 Animal Production Science 3 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

Impact of Microplastics on Livestock: Sources, Exposure Pathways, and Physiological Consequences

This review examined how microplastics enter livestock systems through contaminated soil, water, and feed, and assessed the resulting risks to animal health, food safety, and agricultural sustainability. The review highlights that livestock exposure pathways are numerous and that microplastic contamination of the food chain is a growing concern.

2024 Journal Of Advanced Zoology
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
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

Assessment of heavy metal concentration and their relationship in beef sold in markets

A study measured lead, cadmium, and arsenic concentrations in beef muscle, kidney, and liver from markets in Ghana. Heavy metals can adsorb to microplastics in the environment and accumulate in livestock, highlighting pathways through which plastic pollution may contribute to contaminated meat.

2023 Cornous Biology 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Impact of Co-Contaminants (Microplastics and Others) on Heavy Metal/Metalloid Toxicity and Accumulation in Plants

This review examines how microplastics act as co-contaminants alongside heavy metals and metalloids in agricultural soils, influencing their toxicity and uptake by plants. Researchers found that the presence of microplastics can alter how metals like cadmium, arsenic, and lead accumulate in plant tissues, with implications for crop safety and agricultural productivity.

2026 International Journal of Environment and Climate Change
Systematic Review Tier 1

How aging microplastics influence heavy metal environmental fate and bioavailability: A systematic review

This systematic review found that environmental aging (UV, weathering) degrades microplastics into smaller particles with higher surface reactivity, increasing their capacity to adsorb heavy metals. These aged microplastic-heavy metal complexes bioaccumulate through the food chain, posing greater ecological and human health risks than either pollutant alone.

2025 Environmental Research 10 citations
Article Tier 2

The Unseen Threat of the Synergistic Effects of Microplastics and Heavy Metals in Aquatic Environments: A Critical Review

This review examines how microplastics and heavy metals interact in water environments, finding that microplastics can attract and concentrate toxic metals on their surfaces through various chemical forces. This combination effect is a concern for human health because contaminated microplastics carrying heavy metals can be consumed through seafood, delivering a double dose of pollutants.

2024 Current Pollution Reports 81 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
Systematic Review Tier 1

Interaction of Microplastics and Heavy Metals on Aquatic Organisms : A Review

This systematic review examines how microplastics interact with heavy metals in waterways, finding that plastic particles absorb toxic metals and then release them inside organisms that ingest them. This combination increases the toxicity of both pollutants, leading to DNA damage, tissue changes, and reproductive problems in aquatic life, with potential consequences for human health through the food chain.

2025 Environmental and Agriculture Management 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics as a vehicle of heavy metals in aquatic environments: A review of adsorption factors, mechanisms, and biological effects

This review summarizes how microplastics in water can absorb and carry toxic heavy metals like lead and cadmium, making them more dangerous to aquatic life than either pollutant alone. Environmental factors such as water acidity, salinity, and organic matter influence how much metal sticks to microplastic surfaces. Since contaminated seafood is a major source of human exposure, understanding these interactions is important for assessing health risks.

2021 Journal of Environmental Management 385 citations
Article Tier 2

Coupled effects of microplastics and heavy metals on plants: Uptake, bioaccumulation, and environmental health perspectives

This review examines how microplastics and heavy metals work together to harm plants when both are present in soil. Microplastics can absorb heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and arsenic, and when plants take up these contaminated particles, the combined toxic effect is worse than either pollutant alone. This is concerning for human health because crops grown in contaminated soil could carry both microplastics and concentrated heavy metals into the food supply.

2022 The Science of The Total Environment 205 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

Particulate plastics as a vector for toxic trace-element uptake by aquatic and terrestrial organisms and human health risk.

This paper reviews evidence that microplastics and nanoplastics act as carriers for toxic trace elements like lead, mercury, and cadmium in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, concentrating these metals on their surfaces. The authors assess how adsorption of heavy metals onto plastic particles may increase human and wildlife exposure risks, and discuss how environmental conditions influence metal uptake by plastics.

2019 Environment international
Article Tier 2

Heavy Metals in Poultry Chicken and Human Health Threat: A Mini Review

This paper is not about microplastics. It reviews the bioaccumulation of heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury) in poultry chickens through contaminated feed and environment, and the resulting health risks to humans who consume the meat. The study focuses on food safety concerns related to heavy metal contamination with no connection to microplastic pollution.

2023 Middle East Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5 citations
Article Tier 2

The Individual and Combined Effects of Microplastics and Heavy Metals on Marine Organisms

This review summarizes how microplastics and heavy metals individually and together affect marine organisms. Microplastics can absorb heavy metals from the water and carry them into organisms, creating combined toxic effects that are often worse than either pollutant alone. Since these contaminants accumulate up the food chain and end up in seafood, this combined pollution poses a potential threat to human health through diet.

2025 Microplastics 8 citations
Meta Analysis Tier 1

Meta-analysis reveals the combined effects of microplastics and heavy metal on plants

A meta-analysis of 57 studies found that the combined toxicity of microplastics and heavy metals on plants is driven primarily by the heavy metals, while microplastics mainly interact by inducing oxidative stress damage. Microplastic biodegradation emerged as a core factor influencing heavy metal accumulation in plants, with culture environment, heavy metal type, exposure duration, and microplastic concentration and size all playing roles.

2024 Journal of Hazardous Materials 51 citations