Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Plastic additives and microplastics as emerging contaminants: Mechanisms and analytical assessment

Researchers reviewed how chemical additives mixed into plastics during manufacturing — including stabilizers, flame retardants, and plasticizers — can leach out throughout a plastic's lifecycle and pose risks to ecosystems and human health, with microplastics acting as carriers that concentrate and transport these hazardous chemicals.

2022 TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry 194 citations
Article Tier 2

Leaching of microplastic-associated additives in aquatic environments: A critical review

This review examined how microplastic-associated chemical additives leach into aquatic environments, summarizing recent advances in understanding release kinetics, phase equilibrium between microplastics and water, and the environmental and health risks posed by organic additives and heavy metals.

2022 Environmental Pollution 181 citations
Review Tier 2

Contribution of chemical toxicity to the overall toxicity of microplastic particles: A review

This review examines how the chemical toxicity of microplastics, from leached additives and absorbed pollutants, contributes to their overall harmful effects beyond just physical damage. Over 16,000 chemicals are used in plastic manufacturing, many of which can leach out and cause harm to living organisms at environmentally realistic concentrations. The findings suggest that the chemical cocktail carried by microplastics may be just as important as their physical presence when assessing health risks.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 12 citations
Article Tier 2

Chemical and ecotoxicological assessment of microplastics and emerging risks in the coastal environments

This review examines the chemical composition of microplastics found in coastal environments and assesses their ecotoxicological risks, including the leaching of plastic additives and adsorption of environmental pollutants. It emphasizes the need for better risk assessment frameworks that account for both the particles and their associated chemical contaminants.

2020 Dipòsit Digital de la Universitat de Barcelona (Universitat de Barcelona) 3 citations
Review Tier 2

Occurrence and effects of plastic additives on marine environments and organisms: A review

This review examines chemical additives found in plastics, such as flame retardants, phthalates, and bisphenol A, and how they leach into the marine environment as plastics accumulate and fragment. Researchers summarize evidence showing that these additives have been detected in marine water, sediment, and organisms, and can transfer from ingested plastic into animal tissues. The findings highlight that the chemical risk from plastic additives deserves as much attention as the physical impacts of microplastic particles themselves.

2017 Chemosphere 1204 citations
Systematic Review Tier 1

Environmental behaviors of microplastics in aquatic systems: A systematic review on degradation, adsorption, toxicity and biofilm under aging conditions

Aging processes like UV irradiation and physical abrasion alter microplastic surface properties, increasing their capacity to adsorb environmental pollutants while also enhancing leaching of toxic additives like phthalates, collectively amplifying the environmental toxicity of weathered microplastics.

2021 Journal of Hazardous Materials 560 citations
Article Tier 2

Understanding and Mitigating the Toxic Impacts of Microplastic Pollution on Environmental Health

This review covers the sources, types, and ecological impacts of microplastics as environmental contaminants, examining how polymer-specific properties such as chemical additives affect toxicity across ecosystems and discussing mitigation approaches including physical and chemical remediation.

2025 JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENT AND BIO-SCIENCE
Article Tier 2

Leaching and extraction of additives from plastic pollution to inform environmental risk: A multidisciplinary review of analytical approaches

This review looks at how chemical additives leak out of plastic pollution into the environment, comparing methods used by environmental scientists with established industry testing standards. Plastics contain many added chemicals like flame retardants, stabilizers, and plasticizers that can leach into water and soil. Understanding how these additives are released is important for assessing whether microplastics in food and water are carrying harmful chemicals into the human body.

2021 Journal of Hazardous Materials 279 citations
Article Tier 2

Methods of analysing chemicals associated with microplastics: a review

This review surveys analytical methods used to identify and quantify chemicals associated with marine microplastics, covering extraction techniques, spectroscopic approaches, and the challenges of characterizing the complex mixture of polymer additives and adsorbed contaminants.

2017 Analytical Methods 111 citations
Article Tier 2

Leaching behavior and toxic effect of plastic additives as influenced by aging process of microplastics

This review examined how environmental aging processes affect the leaching behavior and toxicity of plastic additives from microplastics. Researchers found that UV exposure, weathering, and biological degradation alter the physicochemical properties of microplastics, increasing the release of harmful chemical additives and potentially amplifying their toxic effects on organisms in the environment.

2025 Journal of Hazardous Materials Plastics 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Understanding Interface Exchanges for Assessing Environmental Sorption of Additives from Microplastics: Current Knowledge and Perspectives

This review examines how chemical additives move between microplastics and the surrounding environment, including water, soil, and living organisms. The study highlights the complexity of these interactions and emphasizes that understanding how microplastics absorb and release chemicals is essential for properly assessing their environmental and health risks.

2024 Molecules 21 citations
Article Tier 2

Ecological Impacts of Microplastics and Their Additives

This comprehensive review examines how microplastics and their chemical additives cause ecological harm, covering exposure risks, toxicity pathways, and the transport of persistent toxic substances through ecosystems. Microplastics act as carriers for harmful chemicals that can accumulate in organisms and travel up the food chain toward humans. The review emphasizes that understanding the full life cycle of microplastics, from production to environmental breakdown, is essential for assessing risks to both ecosystems and human health.

2025 7 citations
Article Tier 2

Additives and polymer composition influence the interaction of microplastics with xenobiotics

This study examined how chemical additives and structural composition of microplastics affect how they absorb environmental contaminants. Polymer additives significantly influence which toxic chemicals stick to microplastic surfaces, affecting how contaminants move through ecosystems.

2021 Environmental Chemistry 14 citations
Article Tier 2

Release of additives and non-intentionally added substances from microplastics under environmentally relevant conditions

Researchers measured how chemical additives leach out of different types of microplastics under realistic environmental conditions and found wildly different release rates — spanning five orders of magnitude over 64 days — highlighting that the type of plastic matters greatly when assessing the chemical risks microplastics pose to ecosystems.

2023 Environmental Advances 60 citations
Article Tier 2

Aquatic toxicity of chemically defined microplastics can be explained by functional additives

Researchers manufactured microplastics from four polymer types with precisely defined chemical compositions, including different additive formulations, and tested their toxicity to aquatic organisms. They found that the toxic effects of microplastics could largely be explained by the functional additives they contained rather than the base polymer itself. The study suggests that the chemical additives in plastics, not just the plastic material, are a primary driver of microplastic toxicity in aquatic environments.

2020 Journal of Hazardous Materials 151 citations
Article Tier 2

Disentangling the influence of microplastics and their chemical additives on a model detritivore system

Researchers disentangled the physical and chemical effects of microplastics on freshwater detritivores, finding that chemical additives leaching from plastics contributed more to negative impacts on organisms than the polymer particles themselves.

2022 Environmental Pollution 27 citations
Review Tier 2

Emerging and legacy plasticisers in coastal and estuarine environments: A review

This review examined the occurrence and fate of legacy and emerging plasticizers in coastal and estuarine environments, highlighting the chemical risks posed by these plastic additives beyond the physical effects of microplastics themselves.

2023 The Science of The Total Environment 24 citations
Article Tier 2

Degradation of microplastics in the natural environment: A comprehensive review on process, mechanism, influencing factor and leaching behavior

This review examines how microplastics break down in the environment through physical, chemical, and biological processes, and what happens as they degrade. As microplastics age and fragment, they release chemical additives and dissolved organic matter that can be toxic, meaning degrading plastics may actually become more harmful to ecosystems and human health over time.

2025 Journal of Environmental Management 10 citations
Article Tier 2

Microplastic in marine organism: Environmental and toxicological effects

This review examined microplastics as a complex mixture of polymers, additives, and adsorbed environmental contaminants, and assessed their toxicological effects on marine organisms from ingestion and internal distribution. The authors emphasize that microplastic harm comes not only from the plastic itself but from the chemical cocktail it carries, and review the growing evidence for food web transfer.

2018 Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology 756 citations
Article Tier 2

Evaluating nano- and microplastic particles as vectors of exposure for plastic additive chemicals using a food web model: Implications for risk to human health

This review evaluated nano- and microplastic particles as vectors for chemical exposure, examining how plastic additives and sorbed environmental contaminants leach from particles under environmentally relevant conditions. The analysis found that while leaching occurs, risks to human health at realistic environmental concentrations require further quantification.

2024 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Environmental occurrence and ecotoxicological risks of plastic leachates in aquatic and terrestrial environments

This review examines how chemical additives that leach out of plastics -- including hormone disruptors like BPA and phthalates -- affect organisms in both water and land environments. The chemicals' harmful effects depend on environmental conditions like temperature and UV exposure, which influence how much leaches out and how easily organisms absorb it. The findings highlight that the danger of plastic pollution extends beyond the physical particles to the toxic chemicals they release.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 36 citations
Article Tier 2

Effects of aging on environmental behavior of plastic additives: Migration, leaching, and ecotoxicity

This review examines how the aging and weathering of microplastics in the environment causes chemical additives like plasticizers, flame retardants, and antioxidants to leach out. As microplastics age through UV exposure, heat, and biological activity, they release these additives more readily, increasing the toxic risk to organisms. The findings are important because they show that older, weathered microplastics found in the real world may be more chemically hazardous than fresh plastics used in most lab studies.

2022 The Science of The Total Environment 221 citations
Article Tier 2

Understanding the leaching of plastic additives and subsequent risks to ecosystems

This review explains how chemical additives in plastics -- including plasticizers, flame retardants, and stabilizers -- can leach out of microplastics into the environment and potentially into the human body. Some of these additives, such as phthalates and brominated flame retardants, are persistent, build up in living tissue, and are linked to hormone disruption and other health effects. The authors note that our understanding of the full toxicity risk from leaching plastic additives is still limited.

2024 Water Emerging Contaminants & Nanoplastics 39 citations
Article Tier 2

Leaching kinetics and bioaccumulation potential of additive-derived organophosphate esters in microplastics

Researchers studied the leaching kinetics of organophosphate ester additives from microplastics in aquatic environments, finding that these flame retardants and plasticizers are released at rates that depend on temperature and water chemistry, with implications for bioaccumulation in aquatic organisms.

2024 Environmental Pollution 9 citations