Kumar Manish, Gupta Priyansha, Dogra Shiwangi, Sarkar Dibyendu, Mora Abrahan, Ornelas-Soto Nancy, Mahlknecht Jürgen
Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, 64849 Nuevo Leon, Mexico; Sustainability Cluster, School of Advance Engineering, UPES, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248007, India.
Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, 64849 Nuevo Leon, Mexico.
J Contam Hydrol. 2025 Sep;274:104663. doi: 10.1016/j.jconhyd.2025.104663. Epub 2025 Jul 3.
Despite consistently increasing efforts to reduce legacy and emerging pollutants like microplastic (MP), agro-ecosystems, particularly soil carbon is alarmingly threated to be replaced by plastic carbon, endangering the one health. While MPs have witnessed unprecedented research focus and frequency spike, the hydro-biological aspects in connection to urbanization, agricultural practices and ecosystem services are not explicitly discussed. Hence, we provide a comprehensive examination of MP sources, transport, and factors influencing their migration in soil and groundwater, with specific emphasis on urbanization, surface-groundwater interactions, and flooding, its interactions with organic and inorganic pollutants, antibiotic resistance genes, and potential routes exposure to humans, and toxicity augmentation. The investigation explicitly establishes the fact that flood-prone countries exhibit higher MPs infiltration into the greater depth of soil profile. However, plastic mobilization during undefended flood events varies significantly across the globe. Notably, China stands out with the highest MP concentrations in both agricultural soil and groundwater samples compared to other countries. MPs are found to be heterogeneously distributed across different soil depths, from shallow (0-5 cm) layers to deeper ones (up to 40 cm). On the other hand rapid urban development increases plastic waste on streets and other urban areas, and thus the influence of hydro(bio)logy-urbanization-agro-ecosystems nexus become highly significant. As MPs migrate through vadose zone via both vertical and horizontal transport mechanisms, it is imperative that interdisciplinary collaboration of experts from environmental science, hydrogeology, microbiology, material science, and engineering to understand and mitigate MPs contamination to achieve sustainable development goals.
尽管人们一直在不断加大努力减少遗留污染物和新兴污染物，如微塑料（MP），但农业生态系统，尤其是土壤碳正受到令人担忧的威胁，有可能被塑料碳取代，危及“同一个健康”理念。虽然微塑料受到了前所未有的研究关注，研究频率也大幅上升，但与城市化、农业实践和生态系统服务相关的水文生物学方面尚未得到明确讨论。因此，我们全面审视了微塑料的来源、迁移以及影响其在土壤和地下水中迁移的因素，特别强调了城市化、地表水与地下水的相互作用、洪水、其与有机和无机污染物、抗生素抗性基因的相互作用，以及对人类的潜在暴露途径和毒性增强。调查明确证实，易发生洪水的国家微塑料渗入土壤剖面更深层的情况更为严重。然而，在无防护的洪水事件中，塑料的迁移在全球范围内差异很大。值得注意的是，与其他国家相比，中国农业土壤和地下水样本中的微塑料浓度最高。微塑料在不同土壤深度（从浅层（0 - 5厘米）到深层（达40厘米））呈非均匀分布。另一方面，快速的城市发展增加了街道和其他城市地区的塑料垃圾，因此水文（生物）学 - 城市化 - 农业生态系统之间的联系变得极为重要。由于微塑料通过垂直和水平传输机制在包气带中迁移，环境科学、水文地质学、微生物学、材料科学和工程学等领域的专家进行跨学科合作以了解和减轻微塑料污染从而实现可持续发展目标势在必行。
