ReviewWater research2019
Microplastics in freshwaters and drinking water: Critical review and assessment of data quality.
Review in Water research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 342 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
342 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review of the effects of nanoplastics on fish.Frontiers in toxicology · 2025Pooled it
- Bridging environmental pollution and immune dysregulation: How microplastics disrupt gut homeostasis to promote allergic diseases.Virulence · 2026Review
- Evaluation of microplastic pollution in industrial wastewater and their biodegradation using a novel indigenous bacterial isolate.Biodegradation · 2026Article
- PET micro/nanoplastic exposure alters the physicochemical fingerprint of epirubicin-albumin mixtures and modulates bacterial growth and stress responses inRSC advances · 2026Article
- Influence of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) microplastic morphology on bacterial survival during thermal and ultraviolet-C inactivation in aqueous systems.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Review
- Environmentally relevant aged nanoplastics amplify oxidative stress-associated inhalation toxicity and delay lung clearance.Redox biology · 2026Article
- Micro- and Nanoplastics in the Environment: Analytical Approaches, Environmental Fate, Life Cycle, and Remediation Strategies-A Scoping Review.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Review
- A Multispectral Pulsed-Transmission Laser-Diode Sensor Concept for Real-Time In Situ Assessment of Microplastics in Water.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Microplastic contamination in drinking water sources and distribution networks of a Western City in Iran.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Size-dependent internalization of micro- and nanoplastics induces pro-inflammatory and oxidative stress responses in marine and freshwater fish cell lines.Cell stress & chaperones · 2026Article
- Review
- Transcriptomic Insights into Micro- and Nanoplastic Toxicity in Zebrafish: A Narrative Review.Toxics · 2026Review
- Distribution, Polymer Composition, and Exposure Risks of Microplastics in Bottled and Tap Water Distribution.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Dietary microplastic exposure and lip-oral cavity cancer: a global ecological analysis with pre-specified spatial econometric sensitivity.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Carboxyl Surface Modification Attenuates Polystyrene- but Not Poly(methyl methacrylate) Nanoplastic-Induced Gut Dysbiosis in Zebrafish Larvae.Environment & health (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Material-Dependent Toxic Mechanisms of Different Types of Particulate Emerging Contaminants TowardToxics · 2026Article
- Microplastics as Emerging Cotracers in Groundwater Quality Assessments.ACS ES&T water · 2026Review
- Dietary Intake of Micro- and Nanoplastics: Potential Adverse GI Effects on Microbiome, Inflammation, and Neoplasia.Microorganisms · 2026Review
282 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Microplastics have recently been detected in drinking water as well as in drinking water sources. This presence has triggered discussions on possible implications for human health. However, there have been questions regarding the quality of these occurrence studies since there are no standard sampling, extraction and identification methods for microplastics. Accordingly, we assessed the quality of fifty studies researching microplastics in drinking water and in its major freshwater sources. This includes an assessment of microplastic occurrence data from river and lake water, groundwater, tap water and bottled drinking water. Studies of occurrence in wastewater were also reviewed. We review and propose best practices to sample, extract and detect microplastics and provide a quantitative quality assessment of studies reporting microplastic concentrations. Further, we summarize the findings related to microplastic concentrations, polymer types and particle shapes. Microplastics are frequently present in freshwaters and drinking water, and number concentrations spanned ten orders of magnitude (1 × 10
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.