A Toxic Journey: Microplastics as Vectors for Contaminants

Sufficient and latest information on the journey of the toxicity venture of microplastics (MPs) are given in many literatures. MPs play vital roles as a vector for chemical contaminants because of having unique surface properties such as a huge specific surface area, pore size distribution, and elevated hydrophobic behavior along with their durable characteristics. Thus, these characteristics help MPs to have the capacity to take up organic and inorganic chemical contaminants on their surfaces by the forces of adsorption. Therefore, significant concentrations of many harmful hydrophobic organic chemicals, heavy metals, and antibiotics are becoming increasingly evident on MPs’ surfaces and biological agents. Consequently, MPs’ characteristics to become vectors help them to disperse chemical contaminants worldwide from polar regions to tropics in terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric ecosystems and food webs. Like climate change, these toxic chemicals are testing the health and survival of humans and all organisms on earth. In the twenty-first century, microplastic contamination and climate change crises have become the most urgent, unbearable burdens of the earth and organisms living in it. Previous studies and narratives merely explained the relationship among microplastics, aquatic life, and climate change. But nowadays, undesirable consequences of microplastic pollution and their derived microplastic and nanoplastic fragments are becoming self-evident on air, aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems, thereby on the climate change. As in the case of marine life, microplastics have paramount importance in hindering carbon storage and nitrogen cycling. A soil polluted by microplastics affect climate change in two ways. The microplastics have tangible potential to directly accelerate climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the soil into the atmosphere. The second way happens indirectly, when microplastics induce trees and soil organisms to respire more. As the availability of microplastics in the soil increases, more toxic chemicals will accumulate on the surfaces of microplastics near roots’ water and nutrient absorption area, consequently, many trees will be unable to absorb carbon dioxide. In both ways, more GHGs are released into the atmosphere because of microplastics. If microplastics are exposed to ultraviolet radiation and physical and chemical weather processes, they will disperse in the environment, and many GHGs get a way to accumulate into the atmosphere. In all ecosystems, as their exposure time increases, their specific surface area will increase to absorb heavy metals and other contaminants, and, by and large, they will pose irreversible damage to ecology. This chapter is intended to give some insights on the key roles of microplastics as vectors of contaminants in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and pedosphere in the context of global warming. © 2025 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.