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Biodegradable Microplastics: A Review on the Interaction with Pollutants and Influence to Organisms

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Abstract

Biodegradable plastics attract public attention as promising substitutes for traditional nondegradable plastics which have caused the serious white pollution problem due to their persistence. However, even for biodegradable plastics, natual conditions for the rapid and complete degradation are rare. Even more serious is that biodegradable plastics might be disintegrated into microplastics more rapidly than tranditional plastics, emerging as another threat to the environment. Similar to traditional microplastics, biodegradable microplastics could adsorb many pollutants by various physicochemical effects and release additives. Biodegradable microplastics have been confirmed to be toxic to the organisms as particle matter and the vector as pollutants. Under some conditions, biodegradable microplastics may pose more severe negative impacts on the organisms. With the fierely increasing trend to replace the nondegradable plastic commodities with biodegradable ones, it is necessary to evaluate whether biodegradable plastics and the generated microplastics would alleviate plastic pollution or induce greater ecological impacts.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 22006066), the Talent-Recruiting Program of Nanjing Institute of Technology (YKJ2019100), and the Open Fund from State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse of Nanjing University (PCRRF20038).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing, 211167, China

    Yi Wang, Keqiang Ding & Lingxiao Ren

  2. School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Tianjin Chengjian University, Tianjin, 300384, China

    Anping Peng

  3. Nanjing Kaver Scientific Instruments, Co., Ltd, Nanjing, 210042, Jiangsu, China

    Shaoda Zhou

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  1. Yi Wang
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  2. Keqiang Ding
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Correspondence to Anping Peng.

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Wang, Y., Ding, K., Ren, L. et al. Biodegradable Microplastics: A Review on the Interaction with Pollutants and Influence to Organisms. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 108, 1006–1012 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-022-03486-7

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