Sustainable Solutions for Nano and Microplastic Pollution: Challenges and Innovations
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 599
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Nano- and microplastic pollution is an increasing global environmental concern that affects both ecosystems and human health. Despite the exponential growth in plastic research over the past decade and the extensive efforts being made to quantify and characterize these particles, research on nano- and microplastics continues to encounter significant sampling and analytical challenges.
Factors such as the substrate of the samples (water, sediments, biota, etc.) and the plastic characteristics (concentrations, size, weathering, etc.) must be considered for sample collection and all forward analytical procedures. To address the high complexity of these samples and the diversity of these particles, it is crucial to optimize existing methods and develop new, more efficient analytical techniques. Additionally, standardizing sampling and analysis methodologies is essential to fully understand the impacts of nano- and microplastics on ecosystems and human health.
This Special Issue will highlight the current challenges in nano- and microplastic research while proposing innovative, sustainable solutions to improve investigations into this field. Our goal is to address the difficulties faced by the scientific community and foster a consensus to enable the critical homogenization of methodologies across research groups.
For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Challenges encountered during the sampling of nano- and microplastic pollution in various research areas (e.g., sampling in oceanic waters or analyzing plastic ingestion in organisms);
- Difficulties associated with and limitations of current methodologies for the identification and characterization of microplastics (e.g., µFTIR, LDIR);
- Suggestions for making improvements to existing analytical methodologies with a focus on sustainability;
- Presentation of new analytical methods under development, providing the scientific community with insights into upcoming tools that could significantly advance nano- and microplastic research;
- Perspectives on methodology standardization and other innovations that would lead to more accurate results, thereby facilitating the assessment of the impacts of nano- and microplastic pollution on ecosystems and human health.
We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.
Dr. Rocio Rodriguez-Torres
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- nano- and microplastic pollution
- challenges
- sustainable approach
- innovations
- alternatives
- standardization
- analytical and sampling methods
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