This work was funded by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA28030501), the National Key Research and Development Program (2020YFC18070000, 2019YFC1804402), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41991333, 41977137, 42007145, 41977356), the Youth Fund of the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu, China (BK20201106). Fang Wang acknowledges the fellowship of Alexander von Humboldt for experienced researchers from Germany and the fellowship of Shennong Youth Talent from China. Wulf Amelung, Damià Barceló, and Andreas Schäffer acknowledge the Chinese Academy of Sciences President's International Fellowship Initiative for Distinguished Scientists (2024DC0009, 2020DC0005, 2022DC0001). Christian Laforsch was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) project number 391977956–SFB 1357. Yong Sik Ok was supported through a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (no. 2021R1A2C2011734), and was partly supported by the OJEong Resilience Institute (OJERI) Research Grant from the OJERI, Korea University, Republic of Korea. Authors are grateful to Prof. Eddy Y. Zeng for his great help with writing and revision of the manuscript.

As emerging contaminants, microplastics and nanoplastics (MPs/NPs) are increasingly widespread in soil environment. The present paper reviews available analytical methods for detecting MPs/NPs in soil and plants, and examines the migration processes of MPs/NPs at multiple interfaces as well as the potential toxic effects of MPs/NPs. Without standard methods to trace MPs/NPs in different environmental compartments, indoor simulation experiments were mainly adopted in previous studies, differing greatly from MPs/NPs in actual environments. Therefore, we propose that new research should particularly 1) focus on realistic environmental concentrations and surrogates that mimic types, shapes, and sizes of MPs/NPs in natural environments; 2) develop novel methods to improve our understanding of multi-interface migration and transformation of MPs/NPs in the soil-plant system; and 3) advance towards an in-depth assessment of potential toxic effects of MPs/NPs on soil organisms to provide a scientific basis for the effective control of MPs/NPs pollution.

Peer reviewed