(Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from Rutgers University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, CT, and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute in Piscataway, NJ, have shown that microplastic and nanosplastic particles in soil and water can significantly increase how much toxic chemicals plants and human intestinal cells absorb. Using a cellular model of the human small intestine, the researchers found that nano-size plastic particles increased the absorption of arsenic by nearly six-fold compared with arsenic exposure alone. The same effect was seen with boscalid, a commonly used pesticide. Also, the researchers exposed lettuce plants to two sizes of polystyrene particles – 20 nanometers and 1,000 nanometers – along with arsenic and boscalid. They found the smaller particles had the biggest impact, increasing arsenic uptake into edible plant tissues nearly threefold compared to plants exposed to arsenic alone.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, CT; the University of Bern in Switzerland; the University of Auckland in New Zealand; Guangdong University of Technology in China; Central South University of Forestry and Technology in Changsha, China; the Chinese Academy of Forestry in Hangzhou, China; and Beijing Forestry University in China have shown that nutrients on the nanometer scale can not only blunt some of the worst effects of heavy metal and metalloid contamination, but increase crop yields and nutrient content. The scientists found that nanomaterials are more effective than conventional fertilizers at mitigating the harmful effects of polluted soil (by 38.3%), can enhance crop yields (by 22.8%) and the nutritional value of those crops (by 30%), as well as combat plant stress (by 21.6%) due to metal and metalloid pollution.