Recent advancements in urban economies and population growth have led to an escalation in urban soil heavy metal pollution, thereby posing significant threats to human life and health. This paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, detailing the developmental trajectory, research hotspots, and emerging trends in the field of urban soil heavy metal pollution research. Utilizing the CiteSpace and VOSviewer software tools, we conducted an analysis of 1247 articles sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection Database (WoSCC) spanning the period from 2000 to 2022. Our analysis revealed a significant upward trend in the number of publications during the period 2000–2022, a trend expected to persist. Ahmad Kafeel, Khan Zafar Iqbal, and Huang Biao emerged as the leading authors in this domain. The journal, Science of the Total Environment, held the most influence, while China led in the number of publications, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the foremost contributor. The research predominantly focused on source apportionment of urban soil heavy metal pollution, pollution risk assessment, and the application of environmental magnetism. Future research priorities include assessing the human health risks from diverse sources of heavy metal pollution, a key aspect of ensuring urban safety and soil health. Our findings delineate the evolutionary trajectory of urban soil heavy metal pollution research over the past two decades and underscore the viability of employing a dynamic bibliometric approach to investigate this research discipline.

Major global gulfs are essential for economic development but remain highly vulnerable to environmental pollutants. Despite progress in gulf environmental research, the extent of research investment in gulf environments across different regions worldwide remains unclear, which hinders the development of a unified global framework for bay environmental management. We aim to fill this gap by integrating GIS and Python-based methods to identify the ten largest gulfs globally and conducting a statistical analysis of research publications from 2000 to 2024 for these gulfs, based on the Web of Science core database. We find that the publication numbers show a correlation with the size of the gulf. However, the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of St. Lawrence show higher publication volumes, likely influenced by economic activities and major environmental incidents. In contrast, regions such as Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Carpentaria receive relatively less research attention. This suggests that scientific output in gulf regions may be attributed to economic activities and significant environmental events. Water quality research predominates, while sediment studies, particularly in high-latitude gulf areas (such as Hudson Bay), account for the lowest proportion, possibly due to sampling costs and challenges. Traditional pollutants, especially heavy metals (HMs) and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), are the primary focus of research. The investigation of emerging contaminants reveals significant regional disparities, emphasizing the necessity for further research and enhanced regulatory frameworks. This study provides scientific evidence for the unified governance of gulf environments.

Microplastics (MPs) are pervasive environmental pollutants, widely distributed from aquatic ecosystems to the terrestrial food chain, and represent a potential route of human exposure. Although several reviews have addressed MP contamination, a critical synthesis focusing on pathways through which consumer goods directly enter food and beverages, along with corresponding industry and regulatory responses, is lacking. This review fills this gap by proposing the direct release of MPs from common sources such as food packaging, kitchen utensils, and household appliances, linking the release mechanisms to human health risks. The release mechanisms of MPs under thermal stress, mechanical abrasion, chemical leaching, and environmental factors, as well as a risk-driven framework for MP release, are summarized. Human exposure through ingestion is the predominant route, while inhalation and dermal contact are additional pathways. In vitro and animal studies have associated MP exposure to inflammatory responses and oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, and genomic instability as endpoints, though direct causal evidence in humans remains lacking, and extrapolation from model systems necessitates caution. This review revealed that dietary intake from kitchen sources is the primary pathway for MP exposure, higher than the inhalation pathway. Most importantly, this review critically sheds light on the initiatives that should be taken by industries with respect to global strategies and new policies to alleviate these challenges. However, while there has been an upsurge in research commenced in this area, there are still research gaps that need to be addressed to explore food matrices such as dairy products, meat, and wine in the context of the supply chain. In conclusion, we pointed out the challenges that limit this research with the aim of improving standardization; research approaches and a risk assessment framework to protect health; and the key differences between MP and nanoplastic (NP) detection, toxicity, and regulatory strategies, underscoring the need for size-resolved risk assessments.