SILENT ACCUMULATION OF MICROPLASTIC POLLUTION IN TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
Keywords:
Microplastics, silent accumulation, terrestrial ecosystems, agricultural soils, soil health, plastic pollution, environmental fate, predictive modelling, food security, climate change, sustainable materialsAbstract
Microplastic (MP) pollution is widely recognised as a global environmental challenge, yet scientific and policy attention has focused predominantly on aquatic ecosystems despite growing evidence that terrestrial environments are major and increasingly recognised, sinks of plastic contamination. Global plastic production has already exceeded 400 Mt annually and is projected to surpass 1,100 Mt by 2060 under business-as-usual scenarios. While an estimated 19 to 23 Mt of plastic waste enters aquatic ecosystems each year, terrestrial inputs are believed to be substantially higher under many current estimates, due to agricultural plastics, sewage sludge application, atmospheric deposition, urban runoff, and landfill leakage. Consequently, soils are becoming long-term reservoirs of plastic pollution through the process we define here as “silent accumulation”, the progressive, often unnoticed build-up, persistence, fragmentation, and continuous generation of secondary micro- and nanoplastics within terrestrial ecosystems. Although existing studies have documented sources, pathways, occurrence, and ecological effects of MPs in soils, this perspective moves beyond a descriptive synthesis by introducing the concept of silent accumulation as a conceptual framework and integrating current evidence with published future scenarios to examine how terrestrial microplastic contamination may evolve under business-as-usual conditions. Current evidence demonstrates that MPs can alter soil structure, microbial communities, soil fauna, nutrient cycling, and plant performance, whereas published OECD and UNEP projections suggest that continued increases in plastic production, waste generation, environmental leakage, and secondary microplastic formation could intensify terrestrial MP accumulation throughout the coming decades. Major uncertainties remain regarding long-term accumulation rates, ecological thresholds, legacy plastic fragmentation, climate-change interactions, and future contamination burdens. We therefore highlight the need for coordinated global monitoring networks, long-term datasets, and predictive models capable of forecasting terrestrial MP trajectories and identifying critical stress thresholds. Advancing terrestrial microplastic research from a largely descriptive field toward a predictive science is essential for informing preventive policies, protecting soil health, and safeguarding the long-term sustainability of terrestrial ecosystems through standardised monitoring, long-term field studies, predictive modelling, source prevention, and rigorous evaluation of sustainable alternative materials.
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