Leaching of microplastics by preferential flow in earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris) burrows
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Environmental context Microplastics found in soil pose several potential environmental risks. This study shows that microplastics on the soil surface can be ingested by earthworms and transported to the lower soil layers. In this way, microplastics may enter the food chain and find their way into groundwater systems, especially in cases where the water table is shallow. Abstract In the current study, we examine how the activities of earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) affect microplastic (MP) distribution and concentration in soil, with a focus on low density polyethylene (LDPE). We also want to determine if MPs can be flushed out with water. We used a laboratory sandy soil column (polyvinyl chloride tube) experimental set-up and tested five different treatments: (1) treatment with just soil (control) to check if the saturated conductivity (Ksat) could be impacted by MP, (2) treatment with MP, (3) treatment with MP and litter, (4) treatment with earthworms and litter as a second control for treatment 5 and (5) treatment with MPs, earthworms and litter. Each treatment consisted of eight replicates. For the treatments with MP, the concentration of MP added at the start of the experiment was 7 % by weight (3.97 g, polyethylene, 50 % 1 mm–250 µm, 30 % 250 µm–150 µm and 20 % <150 µm) based on 52.78 g of dry litter from Populus nigra. In the treatments using earthworms, two adult earthworms, with an initial average weight of (7.14 ± 0.26) g, were placed in each column. Results showed that LDPE particles could be introduced into the soil by the earthworms. MP particles were detected in each soil sample and within different soil layers for the earthworm treatments. Earthworms showed a tendency to transport the smaller MP particles and that the amount of MPs in size class <250 µm increased in soil samples with increasing soil depth in comparison to the other size classes. After leaching, MPs were only detected in the leachate from the treatments with the earthworms, and the MP had similar size distributions as the soil samples in the 40–50 cm layer of the treatment with MP, earthworms and litter. The results of this study clearly show that biogenic activities can mobilise MP transport from the surface into the soil and even be leached into drainage. It is highly likely that biogenic activities constitute a potential pathway for MPs to be transported into soil and groundwater.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it