Topic: Microplastics as Emerging Contaminants: Environmental Fate, Health Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies

Microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) have emerged as contaminants of profound environmental and public health concern, detected ubiquitously across oceans, rivers, soils, atmosphere, and even human tissues. Their small size, high surface area, and persistent nature enable complex interfacial behaviors — including aggregation, biofilm formation, and pollutant sorption — that fundamentally govern their environmental fate and transport. Yet critical knowledge gaps remain regarding their degradation mechanisms, trophic transfer dynamics, and chronic health effects.

This Special Issue aims to assemble cutting-edge research that advances our understanding of MPs and NPs across the source-to-solution continuum. We invite contributions on interfacial behaviors (surface interactions, eco-corona formation, vector effects), environmental fate (transport, weathering, transformation), ecotoxicology (effects across biological scales), health risks (exposure routes, translocation, toxicity), analytical methods (standardization, detection, quantification, machine learning), and remediation technologies (removal, degradation, depolymerization, circular economy solutions). By bridging environmental chemistry, toxicology, materials science, and public health, we seek to inform evidence-based risk assessment and mitigation strategies for these pervasive emerging contaminants.

Micro(nano)plastics, multi-media, environmental fate, ecological and health risk, remediation technology.