A comprehensive risk assessment of microplastics in soil, water, and atmosphere: Implications for human health and environmental safety

Authors: WANG, YUYAO - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; ZHU, YUANRONG - CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; GUO, GUANGHUI - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; AN, LIHUI - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; FANG, WEN - CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; TAN, YIDAN - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; JIANG, JUAN - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; BING, XIAOJIE - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; SONG, QINGSHUAI - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; ZHOU, QIHAO - CHINESE RESEARCH ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; He, Zhongqi

Submitted to: Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/3/2024
Publication Date: 10/8/2024
Citation: Wang, Y., Zhu, Y., Guo, G., An, L., Fang, W., Tan, Y., Jiang, J., Bing, X., Song, Q., Zhou, Q., He, Z. 2024. A comprehensive risk assessment of microplastics in soil, water, and atmosphere: Implications for human health and environmental safety. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety. 285. Article 117154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2024.117154.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2024.117154

Interpretive Summary: Microplastics (MPs) are plastics with a size smaller than 5 mm. In recent years, MPs have become an emerging pollutant concern with increasing awareness of their adverse effects. MPs can affect human health and ecosystems directly or indirectly. Therefore, there is kind of urgent need to study the migration, transformation and potential risk of MPs in the environment. This article is a comprhensive review of the chemical composition, migration, transformation and potential risk of MPs in soil, water, and atmosphere environment. Because of the rapid increase in the accumulation of risks, certain control measures need to be taken to reduce the level of risks. The main focus of mitigation and relieving approaches should be on control of use at source, supplemented by centralized collection and treatment of MPs and enhanced environmental degradation. Alternatively, a sustainable option to address the synthetic MPs in the environment would be the practice of green chemistry to produce biodegradable bioplastic products (biocomposites and biofilms) from agro-based materials.

Technical Abstract: In recent years, the potential harm of microplastics (MPs) to the ecological environment and human health has increasingly attracted social attention. As an emerging pollutant, MPs are prevalent in ecosystems and have become one of the hotspots in environmental pollution research and controlling. In this study, we searched through Web of Sciences and obtained 135 sets of relevant data from published papers. It is found that the main polymer types of MPs in the ecosystem are polypropylene, polyethylene, polyethylene and polystyrene. The abundance of MPs in soil and water is higher, while the abundance of MPs in atmosphere is lower. MPs have higher risk index and potential ecological risk index in soil, water, and atmosphere, but their total pollution load index levels are all low. MPs have different migration and transformation mechanisms in different environments. MPs can combine with other pollutants to produce more stable compound pollutants. MPs in soil, water, and atmosphere have different effects on human health. In-depth understanding of the combined effects of MPs and pollutants and their adverse effects on the ecological environment, and the improvement of MPs risk evaluation models should be a top priority in the future research. Promotion of development and application of green chemically synthesized bioplastics (biocomposites, biofilms) would be an alternative and sustainable option to relieve the adverse environmental and health concerns of MPs.