Bakhshoodeh Reza, Santos Rafael M
Department of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Western Australia Perth Australia.
School of Engineering, University of Guelph Guelph Ontario Canada
RSC Adv. 2022 Feb 9;12(8):4973-4987. doi: 10.1039/d1ra09344d. eCollection 2022 Feb 3.
Microplastics (MPs) and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are ubiquitous in the environment due to consumer and industrial use. These compounds are very persistent in the environment and human body, which has made them hot environmental topics in recent years; but how this did come about? What factors have been driving the trends of their publication records, the public concern over environmental and public health issues caused by these pollutants, and the collaboration between scientists, regulators, and policymakers to solve these problems? In this paper, to understand these factors and contrast them between the two hot topics ("PFAS" and "MPs"), the changes in the bibliometric and scientometric trends of their publication records (extracted from the Web of Science from 1990 to 2020) have been visualized over time based on different classification perspectives, such as year, country, source, and organization. According to the analyses performed on these records, utilizing publication ratios and principal component and cluster analyses, in recent years (beginning in 2018) research topics related to MPs have surpassed PFAS topics. In addition, the economic, social, and geographical conditions of the top 20 countries with the highest number of publications in MPs and PFAS were explored to identify which countries are most concerned about each of these topics and why. For instance, PFAS research topics were more prevalant in countries with larger water areas compared to land area; while MPs topic were more prevelant in countries that produced more plastic wastes, and had higher landfilling and recycling rates and greater proportion of treated wastewater.
由于消费和工业用途，微塑料（MPs）以及全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）在环境中无处不在。这些化合物在环境和人体中具有很强的持久性，这使它们成为近年来热门的环境话题；但这是如何产生的呢？哪些因素推动了它们的发表记录趋势、公众对这些污染物引起的环境和公共卫生问题的关注，以及科学家、监管机构和政策制定者为解决这些问题而开展的合作？在本文中，为了理解这些因素并在这两个热门话题（“PFAS”和“MPs”）之间进行对比，基于不同的分类视角（如年份、国家、来源和组织），对它们的发表记录（从1990年至2020年的Web of Science中提取）的文献计量和科学计量趋势随时间的变化进行了可视化展示。根据对这些记录进行的分析，利用发表率以及主成分分析和聚类分析，近年来（从2018年开始）与微塑料相关的研究主题已超过PFAS主题。此外，还探究了在微塑料和PFAS领域发表量排名前20的国家的经济、社会和地理条件，以确定哪些国家最关注这些主题以及原因。例如，与陆地面积相比，水域面积较大的国家中PFAS研究主题更为普遍；而在产生更多塑料废物、填埋和回收率更高且经处理废水比例更大的国家中，微塑料主题更为普遍。
