Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Effects of microplastics on soil physical, chemical and biological properties

This review examines how microplastics affect soil health, covering their impact on the physical structure, chemical composition, and biological communities of soil ecosystems. Microplastics can alter soil water retention, change nutrient cycling, and harm soil organisms from earthworms to microbes. Since agricultural soils are a major reservoir of microplastics, these changes could affect crop growth and food quality, creating an indirect pathway for microplastic-related harm to human health.

2024 Natural Hazards Research 32 citations
Article Tier 2

How microplastics are destroying soil and human health

This review examined how microplastics harm soil health — disrupting soil structure, water retention, microbial communities, and nutrient cycling — and how soil degradation translates into risks for human health through food and water contamination. It argues that soil microplastic pollution deserves equivalent attention to aquatic contamination.

2024
Article Tier 2

Exploring the Impact of Micro-plastics on Soil Health and Ecosystem Dynamics: A Comprehensive Review

This review examines how microplastics affect soil health, finding that they alter soil structure, water retention, and the organisms that live in soil. Microplastics can carry toxic substances into soil and interact with other pollutants to amplify harmful effects on earthworms and soil microbes. Since healthy soil is essential for growing safe food, microplastic contamination of agricultural land could have long-term consequences for the food supply and human health.

2024 Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences 15 citations
Article Tier 2

Effects of microplastics on soil properties: Current knowledge and future perspectives

This review examines how microplastics affect soil health, including changes to soil structure, chemistry, and the microbial communities that keep soil fertile. The effects vary depending on the type, shape, and amount of plastic present, but in many cases microplastics alter nutrient availability and can even influence greenhouse gas emissions from soil. These changes could threaten crop productivity and food safety, since microplastics are now found in agricultural soils worldwide.

2021 Journal of Hazardous Materials 837 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics pollution modulating soil biological health – A review

This review summarizes how microplastics enter agricultural soil through recycled water, fertilizer made from sewage, and plastic mulch, and how they affect the organisms that keep soil healthy. Microplastics can carry chemical additives and environmental pollutants that harm soil bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates. These disruptions to soil health could affect crop growth and food quality, creating an indirect pathway for microplastics to impact human nutrition.

2025 Soil Use and Management 8 citations
Article Tier 2

Soils in distress: The impacts and ecological risks of (micro)plastic pollution in the terrestrial environment

This review examines how microplastics affect soil ecosystems, including their transport into soils, changes they undergo in the environment, and their interactions with soil organisms. The effects depend heavily on the type, shape, size, and amount of plastic particles present. Understanding these impacts is important because soil contamination with microplastics can affect food production and ultimately human exposure through the food chain.

2023 Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 93 citations
Systematic Review Tier 1

Macro- and micro-plastics change soil physical properties: a systematic review

This systematic review examines how plastic particles — both large and microscopic — change important soil properties like water retention, density, and structure. These changes can affect how well soil supports plant growth and produces food, raising concerns about the long-term impact of plastic pollution on agriculture.

2023 Environmental Research Letters 22 citations
Article Tier 2

The Growing Problem of Soil Pollution with Microplastics: a Review

This review examined how microplastic accumulation in soil disrupts physicochemical properties including structure, porosity, and water retention, impairs soil microbial communities, inhibits plant growth, and causes oxidative stress, with agricultural soils identified as especially vulnerable to contamination.

2025
Article Tier 2

Unveiling the impacts of microplastic pollution on soil health: A comprehensive review

This review summarizes research from 2021-2024 on how microplastics in agricultural soil harm crop growth, reduce soil organism survival and reproduction, disrupt microbial communities, and alter nutrient cycling. These soil health impacts are relevant to human health because they can compromise food safety and allow microplastics to enter the food supply through contaminated crops.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 44 citations
Article Tier 2

Recent advances on ecological effects of microplastics on soil environment

This review summarizes recent advances in understanding the ecological effects of microplastics on soil environments. Researchers found that soils serve as major sinks for microplastics, which can alter soil properties, affect plant growth, disrupt soil microbial communities, and interact with other pollutants. The study highlights that terrestrial microplastic pollution may be even more pervasive than aquatic contamination and warrants greater research attention.

2021 The Science of The Total Environment 322 citations
Review Tier 2

Microplastics in plant-microbes-soil system: A review on recent studies

This review examined microplastic interactions within the plant-microbe-soil system, finding that microplastics affect soil physicochemical properties, alter microbial communities, and can be taken up by plants, with implications for food safety and ecosystem health.

2021 The Science of The Total Environment 111 citations
Article Tier 2

A global review on the abundance and threats of microplastics in soils to terrestrial ecosystem and human health

This review examines microplastic pollution levels across agricultural, roadside, urban, and landfill soils worldwide, finding wide variation but consistent contamination. Microplastics alter soil pH, density, and water movement, disrupt microbial communities, inhibit plant growth, and affect soil animals. For humans, the concern is that microplastics in soil can enter the food chain through crops and contaminated water.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 64 citations
Article Tier 2

Ecological Effects of Soil Microplastic Pollution

This review summarizes how microplastics contaminate soils, what effects they have on soil animals and microbes, and how they disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling. As soils are the base of terrestrial food webs, microplastic-induced changes in soil ecosystems have cascading effects on food safety and human health.

2019 Science Insights 36 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastics as Emerging Soil Pollutants

This review covers how microplastics enter and accumulate in soils, their effects on soil health, microbial communities, soil fauna, and plant growth, and the implications of widespread soil plastic contamination for ecosystem function.

2024
Article Tier 2

Effect of Microplastic Pollution on Soil, Plants, and Soil Microbes

This review examines how microplastic debris smaller than 5 mm affects soil physical properties, plant growth, and soil microbial communities, with particles dispersing easily through the environment and entering the food chain at multiple trophic levels. The authors discuss mechanisms of soil and plant toxicity and the broader ecological risks of microplastic accumulation in agricultural systems.

2024
Article Tier 2

Does plastic and microplastic change the soil physical properties? A review

This review summarizes how microplastics in soil affect physical properties such as water retention, aggregation, and aeration. Plastic particles enter soil through mulch films, sewage sludge, and irrigation water, and their accumulation threatens the health of agricultural soils that support food production.

2023 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Can microplastics mediate soil properties, plant growth and carbon/nitrogen turnover in the terrestrial ecosystem?

This review assessed evidence for microplastic effects on soil properties, plant growth, and carbon and nitrogen cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. Microplastics were found to alter soil structure, water retention, microbial activity, and nutrient cycling, with cascading effects on plant growth and soil organic matter turnover.

2022 Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 51 citations
Article Tier 2

The extent and impacts of soil pollution by microplastics

This study examines the extent and impacts of soil pollution by microplastics, reviewing evidence of how microplastic particles accumulate in terrestrial environments and affect soil ecosystems, organisms, and agricultural systems.

2024 SPIRE - Sciences Po Institutional REpository
Article Tier 2

A Review on Microplastic in the Soils and Their Impact on Soil Microbes, Crops and Humans

This review examines microplastic contamination in agricultural soils, detailing how microplastic particles act as vectors for toxic organic pollutants and heavy metals, disrupting soil physicochemical properties, microbial communities, crop growth, and ultimately entering the human food chain.

2022 International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 7 citations
Article Tier 2

Impact of Microplastics on Soil's Biodiversity and Public Health

This book chapter reviews the impacts of microplastic pollution on soil biodiversity and public health, examining how plastic particles disrupt soil microbial communities, affect soil-dwelling invertebrates, and enter the human food chain through contaminated crops.

2025
Article Tier 2

Impact of Microplastics on Soil Health: Soil-Water Retention, Shrinkage and Holding Properties

A review of research on microplastics in soil found that plastic particles can alter water retention, shrinkage, and structural properties in ways that could reduce agricultural productivity. Because microplastics are as prevalent in soils as in oceans, their terrestrial impacts warrant much greater research attention.

2020 OakTrust (Texas A&M University Libraries) 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Effects of microplastics on soil carbon pool and terrestrial plant performance

This review explores how microplastics in soil disrupt the carbon cycle by masquerading as natural soil carbon, changing how organic matter breaks down, and altering the communities of microbes that keep soil healthy. These soil changes could indirectly affect human health by reducing crop nutrition and contaminating food with plastic particles that move from soil into plants.

2024 Carbon Research 65 citations
Article Tier 2

The Effect of Microplastic Pollution on Soil, Plants and Soil Microbes and Its Remediation

This review summarized evidence for microplastic effects on soil properties, plant growth, soil microbes, and food safety, identifying microplastic pollution as a significant emerging threat to terrestrial ecosystems. The authors also reviewed bioremediation and physical removal strategies as potential remediation approaches.

2022 Egyptian Journal of Soil Science 13 citations
Article Tier 2

Impact of Microplastics on Soil's Biodiversity and Public Health

This book chapter examines how microplastic contamination of soil affects biodiversity—including soil microbes, invertebrates, and plants—and discusses the broader public health implications of agricultural soil pollution and potential pathways of human exposure through food.

2025