Yan Xiliang, Chen Hanle, Jia Chen, Zhang Jing, Huang Miao, Wang Shenqing, Guo Xing, Yue Tongtao, Chen Lingxin, Zhou Qunfang, Qu Guangbo, Zhu Hao, Jiang Guibin, Yan Bing
Institute of Environmental Research at the Greater Bay Area, Key Laboratory for Water Quality and Conservation of the Pearl River Delta, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Key Laboratory of Marine Environment and Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Coastal Environmental Pollution Control, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China.
Environ Health (Wash). 2025 Jun 4;3(8):920-930. doi: 10.1021/envhealth.5c00085. eCollection 2025 Aug 15.
Nanoplastics toxicity has been framed as an emerging, distinct research area, purportedly addressing a new threat. While this focus has heightened public awareness and influenced the regulation of plastics, isolating nanoplastics toxicity risks inefficiently allocating research resources and hindering sustainable management strategies. Here, using data mining and machine learning, we show that research on nanoplastics toxicity closely mirrors that of engineered nanoparticles, a well-established domain of nanotoxicology. Examining 154,745 research articles on nanoparticle and nanoplastics toxicology, we find that both particle types share similar physicochemical properties, biological uptake mechanisms, toxicity profiles, and structure-toxicity relationships. Although nanoplastics pollution is more pervasive in scale and morphological diversity, its toxicological attributes align with those documented for other nanoscale materials. We challenge the notion that nanoplastics pose a distinct, separate risk, proposing instead that integrating nanoplastics toxicity into the broader field of nanotoxicology can streamline research, prevent duplication of effort, and more efficiently guide policies, resource use, and remediation strategies toward globally sustainable outcomes.
纳米塑料毒性已被界定为一个新兴的、独特的研究领域，据称它应对的是一种新威胁。虽然这种关注提高了公众意识并影响了对塑料的监管，但孤立地研究纳米塑料毒性会导致研究资源分配低效，并阻碍可持续管理策略。在此，我们通过数据挖掘和机器学习表明，纳米塑料毒性研究与工程纳米颗粒的研究极为相似，而工程纳米颗粒是纳米毒理学一个已确立的领域。在研究了154745篇关于纳米颗粒和纳米塑料毒理学的研究文章后，我们发现这两种颗粒类型具有相似的物理化学性质、生物摄取机制、毒性特征以及结构-毒性关系。尽管纳米塑料污染在规模和形态多样性上更为普遍，但其毒理学特性与其他纳米级材料所记录的特性相符。我们对纳米塑料构成独特、单独风险这一观点提出质疑，相反，我们建议将纳米塑料毒性纳入更广泛的纳米毒理学领域，这样可以简化研究、避免重复劳动，并更有效地指导政策、资源利用和修复策略，以实现全球可持续发展成果。
