Try Wonders for freeHow the literature is organised
Thompson et al. (2024) date the field from the first publication to use the word microplastic, twenty years before their review. The literature that followed is organised by environmental compartment, and the marine compartment came first: Andrady (2011) and Cole et al. (2011) on microplastics in the marine environment, Browne et al. (2011), who found microplastic on shorelines at 18 sites across six continents and traced the polyester and acrylic fibres to sewage — a single garment, they measured, can shed more than 1,900 fibres in one wash — and Wright, Thompson and Galloway (2013) on physical impacts on marine organisms. Cole et al. (2013) documented ingestion by thirteen zooplankton taxa and found that microplastics significantly decreased algal feeding in one copepod.
Attention then widened beyond the sea. Horton et al. (2017) evaluated the state of understanding of freshwater and terrestrial environments to identify the knowledge gaps. Alimi et al. (2018) examined how micro- and nanoplastics aggregate, deposit and carry other contaminants, noting that loads and fate in terrestrial and subsurface environments were largely overlooked and that polyethylene sorbs contaminants more readily than other plastics. The third phase concerns people: Cox et al. (2019) used 402 data points from 26 studies to estimate American consumption at 39,000 to 52,000 particles a year, rising to 74,000–121,000 once inhalation is counted, and noted that people drinking only bottled water may ingest around 90,000 more than those drinking tap.
Output has grown every year; the snapshot behind this page counts 9,069 titles for 2025.
Main debates
The main scientific debate is about risk, and the listed sources disagree about how far the evidence reaches. Thompson et al. (2024) report evidence of harm at multiple levels of biological organisation and emerging evidence of negative effects in humans, but close by saying that clear evidence on the efficacy of potential solutions is now needed. Li et al. (2023) summarise toxic effects in cells, organoids and animals — oxidative stress, DNA damage, organ dysfunction, immune response, neurotoxicity — while describing the epidemiological link to chronic disease as suggestive, and set out the gaps in toxicity research. Koelmans et al. (2022) is the paper to read on how a risk assessment of microplastic particles should be framed.
Analytical quality is the second issue, and it underlies the first. Ivleva (2021) points out that reported particle concentrations vary by up to ten orders of magnitude between media, which makes the choice of identification and quantification method decisive. Contamination control matters most in human tissue work, where the quantities are tiny: Jenner et al. (2022) reported their lung-tissue counts both unadjusted and after subtracting procedural and laboratory blanks, and the two figures differ by a factor of two.
Where recent work is heading
Human biomonitoring leads the recent citations: the two most-cited works published since 2021 are Ragusa et al. (2021) on placenta and Vethaak and Legler (2021) on what is not yet known about human health. Around them sit soil (Yang et al., 2021), degradation and microplastic formation (Zhang et al., 2021), chemical analysis of ever smaller particles (Ivleva, 2021) and remediation (Osman et al., 2023). Thompson et al. (2024) summarise what twenty years have established, warn that environmental contamination could double by 2040, and note that diverse measures are under consideration in international negotiations. Local occurrence studies — in a river, sediment, salt or drinking water near you — are a realistic project, provided the sampling and contamination controls are reported as carefully as Hidalgo-Ruz et al. (2012) and Jenner et al. (2022) do.