Bioaccessibility of Metals in Soils at Typical Legacy Industrial Sites: In Vitro Evaluation Using Physiologically-Based Extraction.

Risk assessment of soil metal pollution based on total metal contents might give overestimates by neglecting the bioaccessibility of the pollutants to soil biota. Physiologically-based extraction tests (PBET) are in vitro methods for evaluation of bioaccessibility of soil pollutants. A total of 27 soil samples collected from four types of legacy industrial site representing metal smelting, lead-acid battery factories, chemical plants and steel plants were analyzed for the bioaccessibility of six potentially toxic metals using a PBET method.

Quantification of Microplastics in Soils Using Accelerated Solvent Extraction: Comparison with a Visual Sorting Method.

Visual sorting is a method that is widely used in microplastic analysis, but it has limitation in the quantification of small-size microplastics. Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) which frequently used in the analysis of organic contaminants in soils and sediments was used here for the microplastics quantification. A recovery experiment using different spiked polymeric microplastics separately indicates that ASE was useful in the extraction of low-density and low-melting point polymeric microplastics.

Microplastics in agricultural soils on the coastal plain of Hangzhou Bay, east China: Multiple sources other than plastic mulching film.

Microplastic contamination in agroecosystems raises great concerns. Here, we investigated the impacts of mulching and irrigation on microplastic accumulation in cropped soils. Sixty soil samples covering mulching and no-mulching farmlands, and forty-five irrigation water samples were collected for analysis.

Response of soil enzyme activities and bacterial communities to the accumulation of microplastics in an acid cropped soil.

The ecological stress of microplastics (MPs) contamination in agroecosystems raise worldwide concerns. However very few studies concentrated on the effects of MPs exposure on soil microbial community. The alterations of enzymatic activities and bacterial communities were assayed by spiking 1% and 5% (w/w) of polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) MPs in an acid soil.