Fate and Impacts of Environmental Micro(nano)plastics—From Sampling and Analysis to Risk Assessment
A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Emerging Contaminants".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 2
Special Issue Editor
Interests: micro(nano)plastics; stormwater; waste management and reuse
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The ubiquity of micro(nano)plastics (MPs), defined as plastic and rubber particles that are <5 mm in size, in contaminating various environmental matrices (including drinking water, wastewater and biosolids) has raised concerns about their wide and potentially adverse impact on ecological and human health. Currently, there are limited studies evaluating the environmental fate and transport process of MPs, resulting in inadequate risk assessments. Furthermore, obtaining a comprehensive understanding of their effects is hindered by a lack of robust, validated and standardized techniques for sampling and characterizing MPs. This Special Issue is focused on collecting and disseminating research articles that address the following areas of micro(nano)plastics research:
- The development of methods for sampling and characterizing micro- and nanoplastics, with a particular focus on techniques that can simultaneously assess various size distributions (down to ≤1 µm), polymer chemistry, the presence of additives in microplastics, morphologies, etc.
- Studies evaluating MPs across multiple environmental matrices to assess their fate and transport from source to sink.
- Toxicity-based studies evaluating the relative importance of microplastic contamination on ecological and/or human health relative to other environmental stressors. This includes contributions that establish specific links between microplastic contamination and its associated impact on ecological and/or human health for real scenarios.
- Novel analytical approaches to minimize cost and time for characterizing microplastics in relatively simple (drinking water) to complex environmental matrices (biosolids).
Dr. Balaji Anandha Rao
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- method development and validation
- toxicity
- ecological health
- microplastic
- nanoplastic
- human health
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
