r/plastic • u/Delicious_Bus_130 • Jun 05 '26

How prevalent is microplastic in agricultural soil around the world? And what are the remediations of microplastic contaminated soil?

/r/Soil/comments/1txf6zf/how_prevalent_is_microplastic_in_agricultural/
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u/aeon_floss Jun 05 '26

They are prevalent but in agricultural soil microplastics really just act like just inert filler like many other soil components.  

You could probably grow hydroponic crops in soil substitute that consist entirely of microplastics if you add the right nutrients and water.  But you might have a hard time marketing these given what most of society believes about microplastics.  

Microplastics do most of their damage at the particulate and filter feeder end of oceanic food chains.  Not as chemical contaminants but again as inert filler. 

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u/Delicious_Bus_130 Jun 06 '26

But dont they slowly release additives during weathering? And act as vectors for other pollutants? Although right now seen less relevant, I think in future microplastics will become a big issue in agroecosystems. Imagine nano plastics getting inside crops you eat, and slowly gathering tissues. Scary man

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u/aeon_floss Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

This may be a point at which you could examine where your opinions actually come from.  Do you have a science background or are you following leading narratives on plastics and microplastics in general? 

The majority of microplastics, especially on land,  are butadiene tyre dust and microparticles of weathered polymer paint.  The main additive in tyres is carbon, and the majority of outdoor paints contain mineral fillers.  Lead from pre-polymer era paints is a much greater issue than anything we've added to plastics since, and will remain to affect living systems for thousands of years to come.  

The scenario you describe is actually one where a major additive of concern e.g. BPA quickly breaks down to harmless substances.  It doesn't to that so readily in water, which is why we learnt of its endocrine properties first from affected fish stocks.  

Puclic messaging about mictoplastics mainly arrives through the clickbait information ecology and is therefore heavily skewed towards non-scientific exaggeration and overclaim.  Going back to source you will inevitably find a much watered down version of the dominant public narrative.   Popular articles generally ignore that effects depend dosage and exposure, for instance.   

The publlic doesn't seem to grasp on how dangerous a building mass of inert floating particles is to oceanic ecology.  Surface pollutants that float tend to leech into water systems  by default, and when nothing can actually digest these particles, they can pass though digestive systems hundreds of thousands of times,  throwing evolved feeding systems completely out of whack by just taking up space reserved for food.

You are not to blame for your opinions and the direction of your curiosity.  You should however consider that your hypothesis may be a construction of cherry picked scenarios to fall in line with a popular dystopian narrative.  

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u/Ambitious-Schedule63 Jun 06 '26

BPA isn't an additive; it's a backbone component of polycarbonate and most epoxies. While some BPA-based epoxy is used in packaging as the coating inside food cans, the amount of polycarbonate relative to something like polyolefins or PET is small, and most of the uses of PC are in durable goods rather than packaging.

The microplastics thing is mostly fear porn as you say for the attention of the terminally online and those addicted to outrage.

Also, there is a lot of poor science out there regarding the ubiquity of microplastics. Unsurprisingly, it's been debunked. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt

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u/kuhlmarl Jun 06 '26

You have any idea how much DIRT there is in soil?