Souza, Fernando Gomes., Bhansali, Shekhar., & Thundat, Thomas G. (2025).听.听Macromolecular Rapid Communications. Advance online publication.听
In this study, researchers analyzed聽104,471 scientific abstracts听补产辞耻迟听microplastics and nanoplastics聽using both聽bibliometric tools聽(methods for studying patterns in scientific publications) and聽machine learning models. This allowed them to map out major research themes and identify which plastic materials are most often linked to potential health and environmental risks.
They created a combined聽Harmfulness Score聽by using聽sentiment analysis, descriptions of harmful effects, and measures of how central certain terms are in scientific networks. Using this score,听polystyrene (PS)听补苍诲听polyethylene (PE)聽ranked as the plastics most frequently associated with terms like聽oxidative stress,听cytotoxicity, and聽genotoxicity, indicating that they are discussed more often in connection with harmful biological effects.
The analysis also revealed that important聽physicochemical details鈥攕uch as particle size, density, and surface area鈥攚ere rarely reported across studies (only 3.91%, 0.01%, and less than 0.01% of abstracts, respectively). This lack of information makes it harder to build accurate computer models or conduct reliable risk assessments.
Thematic clustering showed that current research focuses heavily on聽environmental policy听补苍诲听biological impacts聽of microplastics, while newer areas such as聽microbial and enzymatic degradation听补苍诲听legal-policy connections聽are rapidly emerging.
Overall, the findings point to a clear need for more聽standardized reporting practices聽and broader use of consistent analytical frameworks to improve the reliability of research and support better policymaking.
FIGURE 1
Co-occurrence network of terms in microplastic and nanoplastic research from 1961 to 2025, generated using VOSviewer. (a) Network visualization map showing clustered thematic areas based on term co-occurrence frequency and total link strength. (b) Overlay visualization map displaying the average publication year of terms, highlighting temporal trends and emerging research topics.