Perspectives on the Toxic Effects of Micro- and Nanoplastics on the Environment: A Bibliometric Analysis of the 2014 to 2023 Period.

Abstract

Over the past decade, micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) have garnered significant attention due to their frequent detection in and potential toxic effects on the environment and organisms, making them a serious threat to human health. To comprehensively understand the research on MNPs' toxicity, we employed the R language-based Bibliometrix toolkit (version 4.3.0), VOSviewer (version 1.6.11) and CiteSpace (version 6.3.R1) to perform statistical and visual analyses of 3541 articles pertaining to MNPs' toxicity between 2014 and 2023, which were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database. The analysis revealed that research related to MNPs' toxicity has experienced a rapid increase in recent years. China's particularly prominent influence in the field of MNPs' toxicity is evidenced by its academic exchanges and the establishment of a mature cooperation system with other countries (regions), such as the USA and Germany. Studies related to MNPs' toxicity are primarily published in leading journals, including the Science of the Total Environment, Environmental Pollution, and the Journal of Hazardous Materials. The Chinese Academy of Sciences was identified as the leading institution in terms of research on MNPs' toxicity, contributing 203 papers to the total number of studies published. Keyword co-occurrence and burst analyses indicated that the current research on MNPs' toxicity mainly focuses on the toxic effects of MNPs on aquatic organisms, the combined toxicity of MNPs and other contaminants, and the toxic effects and mechanisms of MNPs. Future research should integrate computational toxicology and toxicomics to enhance our understanding of MNPs' toxicity mechanisms and assess the potential health risks posed by atmospheric MNPs.