Microplastics Can Change Soil Properties and Affect Plant Performance.

By A. A. de Souza Machado, C. W. Lau, W. Kloas, J. Bergmann, J. Bachelier, Erik Faltin, R. Becker, A. Görlich, Matthias C. Rillig. Environmental Science and Technology, 2019

1,614 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Microplastics can affect biophysical properties of the soil. However, little is known about the cascade of events in fundamental levels of terrestrial ecosystems, i.e., starting with the changes in soil abiotic properties and propagating across the various components of soil-plant interactions, including soil microbial communities and plant traits. We investigated here the effects of six different microplastics (polyester fibers, polyamide beads, and four fragment types: polyethylene, polyester terephthalate, polypropylene, and polystyrene) on a broad suite of proxies for soil health and performance of spring onion ( Allium fistulosum). Significant changes were observed in plant biomass, tissue elemental composition, root traits, and soil microbial activities. These plant and soil responses to microplastic exposure were used to propose a causal model for the mechanism of the effects. Impacts were dependent on particle type, i.e., microplastics with a shape similar to other natural soil particles elicited smaller differences from control. Changes in soil structure and water dynamics may explain the observed results in which polyester fibers and polyamide beads triggered the most pronounced impacts on plant traits and function. The findings reported here imply that the pervasive microplastic contamination in soil may have consequences for plant performance and thus for agroecosystems and terrestrial biodiversity.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dfece4566dc845c126b51a346160688d6c261921

How researchers see this paper

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In Biomaterials

1. A. Lehmann
2. J. Bergmann
3. A. Wulf
4. Linshan Feng
5. E. Leifheit
6. Matthias C. Rillig

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. A. Lehmann
2. J. Bergmann
3. A. Wulf
4. Linshan Feng
5. E. Leifheit
6. Matthias C. Rillig

In Pollution

1. A. Lehmann
2. J. Bergmann
3. A. Wulf
4. Linshan Feng
5. E. Leifheit
6. Zhijie Zhang
7. Lisa Gutbrod
8. Anna Brumer

Citations in the corpus

• A microplastic used as infill material in artificial sport turfs reduces plant growth (2020, background): “Plastic waste comes in different sizes, and the ecological con‐ sequences are likely to depend on the size of the parts or particles and the chemical make‐up (de Souza Machado et al., 2019; Windsor et al., 2019).”
• Microplastic fiber and drought effects on plants and soil are only slightly modified by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (2020, methodology): “For this, we carefully mixed the soil samples after measuring the MWD, placed 4.0 g of each sample on a small sieve with a mesh size of 250 µm.”