Microplastic Pollution in Aquatic Environments: Advanced Detection Technologies, Ecological Impacts, and Sustainable Mitigation Strategies

Abstract

Microplastic contamination of aquatic environments has progressed from a niche observation in marine debris research to a globally documented contamination class spanning oceans, freshwater systems, and wastewater infrastructure, driven by the sheer scale of global plastic production and the fragmentation, rather than degradation, that characterizes plastic's environmental fate. This paper reviews the analytical, ecological, and mitigation literature on microplastic pollution, tracing the field's development from early marine-debris quantification through the standardization of spectroscopic identification methods, the accumulated ecotoxicological evidence on ingestion, physical harm, and chemical vector effects in aquatic organisms, and the wastewater-treatment and source-reduction literature addressing mitigation. The review synthesizes foundational abundance and sourcing studies, the methodological literature comparing visual, spectroscopic, and thermoanalytical detection techniques, and the ecological effects literature spanning invertebrates, fish, and trophic transfer. Distinct comparative tables map detection technologies onto their particle-size resolution and polymer-identification capability, cross-reference documented ecological impact mechanisms against the aquatic taxa and evidence type supporting each, and set specific mitigation strategies against the point in the plastic lifecycle each targets. The paper concludes that microplastic detection methodology has matured considerably faster than either a mechanistic consensus on ecological risk thresholds or the deployment of source-level mitigation infrastructure, and identifies standardized, cross-laboratory detection protocols as the central precondition for resolving the field's remaining ecological and regulatory uncertainty.