Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Complex Mixtures and Multiple Stressors: Evaluating Combined Chemical Exposures and Cumulative Toxicity

This review examined how complex chemical mixtures and multiple stressors interact to produce cumulative toxicity, highlighting that traditional single-chemical risk assessments underestimate real-world exposure risks where organisms face simultaneous pollutant combinations.

2023 Toxics 10 citations
Article Tier 2

Mixed Contaminants: Occurrence, Interactions, Toxicity, Detection, and Remediation

This review examines how mixed environmental contaminants, including microplastics, heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, interact when present together in the environment. The study highlights that pollutant mixtures can produce synergistic toxic effects that are greater than the sum of individual pollutants, making combined contamination a more complex risk than single-pollutant assessments suggest.

2022 Molecules 67 citations
Article Tier 2

Assessing the chemical interactions and biological effects of a petrochemical and bio-based plastic with a common plastic flame retardant and solvent

Researchers assessed the combined chemical interactions and biological effects when organisms were exposed to both petrochemical and agricultural contaminants simultaneously. Mixture effects were often greater than predicted by individual chemical toxicity, highlighting the importance of studying realistic multi-contaminant exposures.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Principal Sources, Fate, and Mechanism of Chemical Mixtures in the Environment

This review investigates the sources, formation pathways, and environmental fate of chemical mixtures, including how different pollutants interact when they coexist in natural settings. The study highlights that the combined effects of chemical mixtures on ecosystems and human health have been largely overlooked, even though real-world environmental contamination almost always involves multiple pollutants at once.

2025 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Mixtures of Micro and Nanoplastics and Contaminants of Emerging Concern in Environment: What We Know about Their Toxicological Effects

This review examines what is known about the toxicological effects of micro- and nanoplastic mixtures combined with other emerging contaminants in the environment. Researchers found that most studies fail to calculate proper interaction parameters, making it difficult to determine whether combined exposures produce additive, synergistic, or antagonistic effects on organisms.

2024 Toxics 14 citations
Article Tier 2

A review on the combined toxicological effects of microplastics and their attached pollutants

Researchers reviewed how microplastics act as carriers for other environmental pollutants — including heavy metals and persistent organic chemicals — and how these combinations produce toxic effects in organisms that are more severe than either contaminant alone. The findings highlight a complex, layered toxicity problem that affects microbes, invertebrates, and vertebrates across marine and terrestrial environments.

2025 Emerging contaminants 20 citations
Article Tier 2

Advances in aquatic toxicology for predicting effects of multiple pollutants on aquatic organisms

This review examines advances in aquatic toxicology for predicting how mixtures of contaminants — heavy metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and microplastics — interact in aquatic organisms, highlighting computational modeling and mixture toxicity approaches as key tools for environmental risk assessment.

2025 International Journal of Aquatic Research and Environmental Studies
Article Tier 2

Chemical Mixtures and Multiple Stressors: Same but Different?

This review highlights the parallels between chemical mixture research and multiple stressor ecology, arguing that both fields face similar challenges in predicting joint effects and would benefit from integrated frameworks combining chemical and non-chemical stressor assessments.

2023 Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 44 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics and PFAS as ubiquitous pollutants affect potencies of highly toxic chemicals in mixtures

Researchers investigated how ubiquitous pollutants like PFAS and microplastics affect the toxicity of other highly toxic chemicals when present together in mixtures. They found that even at non-toxic concentrations, PFAS and microplastics could alter the potency of co-occurring toxic compounds. The study highlights the importance of considering pollutant interactions in complex environmental mixtures rather than assessing chemicals in isolation.

2025 Journal of Hazardous Materials 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Tricks and tracks of prevalence, occurrences, treatment technologies, and challenges of mixtures of emerging contaminants in the environment: With special emphasis on microplastic

This review examines how microplastics interact with other emerging contaminants like pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals in soil and water, often acting as carriers that transport these pollutants into ecosystems. The combined exposure to microplastics and these toxic substances can cause cancer-promoting, hormone-disrupting, and birth-defect-causing effects in living organisms, including humans.

2024 Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 41 citations
Article Tier 2

Toxicological interactions of microplastics/nanoplastics and environmental contaminants: Current knowledge and future perspectives

This review examines how the combined presence of micro- and nanoplastics with other environmental contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals affects toxicity. Researchers found that plastic particles can alter the bioavailability and toxic effects of co-occurring pollutants, sometimes increasing harm to organisms, which complicates environmental risk assessment.

2020 Journal of Hazardous Materials 501 citations
Article Tier 2

Interactions of microplastics with organic, inorganic and bio-pollutants and the ecotoxicological effects on terrestrial and aquatic organisms

This review systematically examines how microplastics interact with organic pollutants, heavy metals, and biological contaminants in the environment. Researchers found that microplastics can adsorb and transport these pollutants, creating complex combinations that may be more toxic to organisms than either pollutant alone. The study highlights the risks these interactions pose to both ecosystem health and human well-being.

2022 The Science of The Total Environment 126 citations
Article Tier 2

Human risk associated with exposure to mixtures of antiandrogenic chemicals evaluated using in vitro hazard and human biomonitoring data

Researchers evaluated the combined health risk of exposure to multiple hormone-disrupting (antiandrogenic) chemicals using both lab test data and human biomonitoring measurements. Their analysis suggests that boys with high cumulative exposure to these chemicals face a potential concern for harm to reproductive function, highlighting the need to assess chemical mixtures rather than individual substances in isolation.

2023 Environment International 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Combined Molecular Toxicity Mechanism of Microplastics Mixtures

This review examines how microplastics interact with other environmental pollutants like heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, altering how toxic those substances behave. The study explores the molecular mechanisms behind these combined toxicity effects, which matter because in real-world environments, organisms are rarely exposed to microplastics in isolation.

2025 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Role of the Synergistic Interactions of Environmental Pollutants in the Development of Cancer

This review examines how mixtures of environmental pollutants, including microplastics, may interact synergistically to promote cancer development, even when individual pollutant levels are below established safety thresholds. The study suggests that the combined effects of multiple low-dose exposures deserve greater attention in risk assessment, as traditional single-pollutant evaluations may underestimate the true health risks.

2022 GeoHealth 68 citations
Article Tier 2

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.

2025 Marine Pollution Bulletin 11 citations
Article Tier 2

Review and Prospects on the Ecotoxicity of Mixtures of Nanoparticles and Hybrid Nanomaterials

This review examines the toxic effects of nanoparticle mixtures on a wide range of organisms, from algae and bacteria to fish and plants. Researchers found that combined exposure to multiple nanoparticles often produces different effects than exposure to individual particles, making toxicity predictions challenging. The study highlights the need for better methods to assess real-world risks from simultaneous exposure to multiple engineered nanomaterials in the environment.

2022 Environmental Science & Technology 100 citations
Article Tier 2

Integrative Evaluation of the Ecological Hazards by Microplastics and Heavy Metals in Wetland Ecosystem

Researchers conducted an integrative ecological hazard assessment of microplastics combined with heavy metals, evaluating their combined toxicity to aquatic organisms. The study found that co-contamination with heavy metals and microplastics poses greater ecological risk than either pollutant alone.

2023 Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 11 citations
Article Tier 2

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.

2021 Journal of Hazardous Materials 520 citations
Article Tier 2

A Review on Emerging Contaminants: Effects on Human Health and Cancer Risks

This review examines how emerging contaminants, including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals, may contribute to health problems and cancer risk. Evidence indicates that many of these pollutants can disrupt hormones, trigger inflammation, and cause DNA damage, though the long-term effects of low-level exposure are not yet fully understood. The authors stress the need for better monitoring, regulation, and research into how mixtures of these contaminants affect human health over time.

2024 Journal of Clinical and Nursing Research 4 citations
Article Tier 2

A critical review on the interaction of polymer particles and co-existing contaminants: Adsorption mechanism, exposure factors, effects on plankton species

This review critically examines how microplastics and nanoplastics interact with co-existing contaminants including organic pollutants, toxic metals, and nanoparticles. Researchers found that the combined toxicity depends on multiple factors including plastic size, polymer type, weathering, and the nature of the co-contaminant. The study reveals that mixture effects on plankton species vary widely, with some combinations producing synergistic harm and others showing antagonistic interactions.

2022 Journal of Hazardous Materials 64 citations
Article Tier 2

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.

2025 Journal of Environmental Management 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Combined Toxicity of Chemicals: Final Thoughts and Concluding Remarks

This book chapter synthesizes combined chemical toxicology, covering the principles of synergistic and antagonistic effects, environmental fate of pollutant mixtures, experimental models, and in silico approaches, providing a systematic framework for assessing health and environmental risks from complex chemical exposures.

2025
Article Tier 2

Elucidating the consequences of the co-exposure of microplastics jointly to other pollutants in bivalves: A review

This review examines studies on the combined effects of microplastics and other pollutants in bivalves, finding that co-exposure often modifies individual toxicant effects and highlighting bivalves as important sentinel species for monitoring complex environmental contamination.

2022 Environmental Research 34 citations