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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Pragmatic and Fragile Effects of Wastewater on a Soil-Plant-Air Continuum and Its Remediation Measures: A Perspective
ClearImpact of Wastewater on the Soil–Plant–Atmosphere Interface: Challenges and Remediation Approaches
This review examines the wide-ranging impacts of using wastewater for agricultural irrigation, covering effects on soil health, crop safety, and greenhouse gas emissions. Among the many concerns discussed, microplastics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerging from wastewater reuse are flagged as growing threats requiring better monitoring and policy responses. For readers interested in microplastics, the paper highlights how irrigation with wastewater is one of the pathways by which plastic particles enter farmland soils and ultimately the food chain.
Treated wastewater irrigation: unlocking sustainability in agriculture and food security—a comprehensive review
This comprehensive review explores treated wastewater as an alternative irrigation source for agriculture in water-scarce regions. While treated wastewater can improve soil fertility and crop growth, the review notes concerns about contaminants including microplastics that can accumulate in soil and potentially enter the food chain, emphasizing the need for effective treatment technologies.
Mitigating risks and maximizing sustainability of treated wastewater reuse for irrigation
This review examines the benefits and risks of using treated wastewater for crop irrigation, drawing heavily on Israel's experience as a world leader in this practice. While treated wastewater is a valuable water source, it can contain emerging contaminants including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and pathogens that may affect soil health, crops, and human health. The authors call for better policies and global data sharing to ensure safe reuse of wastewater in agriculture.
Potential for nutrients reuse, carbon sequestration, and CO2 emissions reduction in the practice of domestic and industrial wastewater recycling into agricultural soils: A review
This review examines the practice of recycling treated wastewater and sewage sludge as agricultural irrigation and fertilizer, assessing both the benefits of nutrient reuse and the risks from contaminants. While recycled wastewater can provide valuable nutrients and help reduce carbon emissions, it also introduces pollutants including microplastics into farm soil. The review highlights the need to balance the environmental benefits of wastewater reuse with the potential health risks from microplastic and chemical contamination of food crops.
Uptake of Emerging Contaminants and Pathogens by Plants: Use and Impact of Wastewater
This review examines how emerging contaminants—including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and pathogens—are taken up by plants irrigated with treated wastewater. The authors find that plant uptake depends on root morphology, contaminant properties, and treatment level, and conclude that risks to food safety from wastewater reuse remain insufficiently characterized.
Biological Risks of Waste Water for Irrigation
This study examined the biological risks of using treated wastewater for irrigation, including contamination by pathogens, heavy metals, and microplastics, and the implications for agricultural sustainability and public health.
Possible effects on plants due to microplastics in soils from wastewater effluent reuse or sewage sludge application
This chapter reviews the possible effects of microplastics in soils on plant health, with particular focus on soils irrigated with reclaimed wastewater or amended with sewage sludge — two major pathways for microplastic entry into agricultural land. Evidence suggests that microplastics can affect plant growth and may alter soil properties.
Sustainable wastewater reuse for agriculture
Researchers reviewed the potential of treating and reusing wastewater for agricultural irrigation, noting that while less than 20% of the world's wastewater is currently treated, advanced systems could provide a stable, energy-generating water supply for farming. The main hurdle is that current treatment technologies cannot fully remove all emerging chemical contaminants, including microplastics, which may affect crops and human health.
Phytotoxic Effects of Treated Wastewater Used for Agricultural Irrigation On Root Hydraulic Conductivity and Plant Growth
This study tested whether treated municipal wastewater used for crop irrigation harms plants, finding effects on root water transport and growth. Treated wastewater often contains microplastics and plastic-associated chemicals, and irrigating with it may be a pathway for these contaminants to enter food crops.
Waterborne contaminants in high intensity agriculture and plant production: A review of on-site and downstream impacts.
This review examined waterborne contaminants—including microplastics, pathogens, and agrochemicals—affecting plant production nurseries that rely on recycled irrigation water. It identified key on-site and off-site contamination risks and proposed management strategies to safeguard water quality in high-intensity plant production systems.
Treated Wastewater as an Irrigation Source in South Africa: A Review of Suitability, Environmental Impacts, and Potential Public Health Risks
This review evaluates the suitability of treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation in South Africa, examining both benefits and risks. The study found that while treated wastewater can improve soil nutrients and fertility, elevated levels of salts, heavy metals, and microplastics from insufficient treatment processes may pose significant environmental and public health risks.
Phytotoxic effects of treated wastewater used for agricultural irrigation on root hydraulic conductivity and plant growth
Researchers conducted hydroponic experiments to test the phytotoxic effects of treated wastewater on root hydraulic conductance in maize seedlings, finding that pressurized water flow through excised roots was reduced by 25-52% within 90 minutes of exposure. The study identified wastewater components that impair plant water transport capacity when agricultural irrigation uses treated effluent.
Microplastics in agricultural soils: sources, impacts, and mitigation strategies
This review summarizes how microplastics enter agricultural soils through wastewater irrigation, plastic mulch breakdown, and atmospheric deposition, where they alter soil structure, microbial communities, and water retention. The particles can also carry heavy metals and organic pollutants into the food chain, threatening both crop productivity and human health, making it important to reduce plastic use in farming and improve waste management.
Water pollution from food production: lessons for optimistic and optimal solutions
Researchers proposed a multi-pollutant framework for assessing water pollution from food production, drawing lessons from how air quality science handles multiple contaminants simultaneously. The study argues that future water quality assessments should better integrate economic and social goals alongside environmental targets, using participatory approaches to develop practical and politically feasible solutions.
Possible effects on plants due to microplastics in soils from wastewater effluent reuse or sewage sludge application
This book chapter reviews potential effects of microplastics on plants when microplastic-containing wastewater or sewage sludge is applied to agricultural land. The research addresses how land application of treated sewage can introduce microplastics into soil where they may affect crop growth and food safety.
Sewage sludge as a sustainable fertilizer: Promise, pitfalls, and future directions
This review examines both the promise and pitfalls of using sewage sludge as a fertilizer, finding that while it reduces agrochemical costs and provides nutrients for crops, it also introduces microplastics, pathogens, and heavy metals into agricultural soils with implications for food safety and public health.
Land application of industrial wastes: impacts on soil quality, biota, and human health
Researchers reviewed the practice of applying industrial waste to agricultural land and found it can offer benefits like nutrient recycling and landfill diversion, but also poses risks from contaminants including heavy metals and potentially microplastics. The review identified major gaps in long-term research needed to safely guide land application policies.
Microplastics in Irrigation Systems: A Growing Threat to Agriculture Soil and Crop Plant
This review examines how microplastics enter agricultural soil through irrigation water, where they can degrade soil quality and harm plant growth. Microplastics from wastewater, plastic mulch, and contaminated water sources accumulate in farmland and can be taken up by crops. The study highlights a growing concern that irrigated agriculture may be a major pathway for microplastics to enter the human food supply.
Long-term agricultural reuse of treated wastewater and sewage sludge: developing a Time to Critical Content Index for metal species
Researchers reviewed long-term effects of treated wastewater and sewage sludge reuse in agriculture, developing a framework to assess microplastic and contaminant accumulation in soils and crops over repeated application cycles.
Interactive effects of microplastics, heavy metals, and soil microecology under different irrigation water sources
Researchers found that using a mix of river water and treated wastewater to irrigate crops led to the highest levels of tiny plastic particles (microplastics) in soil, along with increased amounts of heavy metals like lead and chromium. These microplastics appear to help these harmful metals stick around in the soil rather than being naturally filtered out. This matters because these pollutants could potentially make their way into the food we eat, though more research is needed to understand the health risks.
Water Pollution and Agriculture: Multi-pollutant Perspectives
This review examines agriculture as a multi-pollutant source of water contamination, identifying large spatial and temporal variation in nutrient, pesticide, plastic, and pathogen loads and arguing that agricultural water management strategies must account for these simultaneous pollutant interactions.
Extent and impact of microplastics on soil nutrients and biota: a trade-off assessment
This review examines the extent of microplastic inputs from sewage sludge applied to agricultural soils, synthesizing evidence on how sludge-derived microplastics affect soil nutrient availability, soil biota, plant performance, and crop productivity, concluding that the benefits of sludge as a soil amendment must be weighed against its role as a vector for microplastic contamination.
Accumulation of Heavy Metals in Soils Irrigated by Treated Wastewater: A Case Study from the Northwest of the Haut Chelif Plain, Algeria
Researchers monitored heavy metal accumulation in soils irrigated with treated wastewater over four years in northwest Algeria, finding that long-term treated wastewater irrigation enriches soils with heavy metals at both 0-20 cm and 20-40 cm depths, with accumulation rates influenced by wastewater composition, climate, soil type, and irrigation frequency.
Micro (nano) plastic pollution: The ecological influence on soil-plant system and human health.
This review examines how micro- and nanoplastics affect soil health, plant growth, and food quality, finding that these particles accumulate in plant root systems and can reduce crop yields and alter nutritional content. Since contaminated soil and water are increasingly delivering microplastics to food crops, these findings are directly relevant to agricultural food safety.