The Issue of Plastic and Microplastic Pollution in Soil

Soil pollution with plastics represents a great threat to plants, animals, but especially to humans, as a very small quantity of the plastic which is discarded daily is recycled or incinerated in waste facilities, much of it reaching landfills where their decomposition lasts up to 1000 years and during this time the toxic substances penetrate the soil and the water. If, initially, the pollution with plastics has been identified and recognized in the aquatic environment, recent studies show that plastics residues exist in huge quantities in the soil. The present study focuses on the analysis of factors that pollute soil, so the various studies that have been carried out claim that soil pollution with plastic is much higher and increases in an aggressive manner, being estimated to be 4 to 23 times higher than water pollution with plastics, and the accumulation of microplastics in the soil has a negative impact on soil biota. Thus, once the plastic material accumulates in the soil, it is assimilated to organic matter and the mineral substitutes of the soil and persists for several hundred years.