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Viability of Elutriation for the Extraction of Microplastics From Environmental Soil Samples
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This study evaluated elutriation—a density and particle-size separation technique—as a preprocessing step for microplastic extraction from freshwater and terrestrial soils across five Oklahoma soils of varying composition. Elutriation achieved 59–97% sample mass reduction without statistically significant differences in microplastic particle quantity or mass compared to non-elutriated samples, while enabling more polymers to be positively identified by ATR-FTIR analysis, supporting its adoption as a recommended pretreatment step.
In this study, we evaluated the suitability of elutriation, a method successfully employed in the extraction of microplastics from marine sediments, for the extraction of microplastics from freshwater and terrestrial soils. Five soils were sampled throughout Oklahoma, USA in order to capture a range of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter composition. Each soil was subjected to microplastic extraction with and without elutriation, followed by digestion in 7.5% NaOCl, and then flotation in 6 M ZnCl2. The mass of each soil was measured after elutriation to determine sample mass reduction, and multiple methods including fluorescence imaging and automated particle counting through ImageJ, Attenuated Total Reflectence-Fourier Transfor Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), and Pyrolysis-coupled Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (py-GC/MS) were used to determine microplastic quantity, mass, and characteristics. T-test was used to check for statistically-significant differences between methods in terms of mass or particle quantity. For all tested soils, elutriation resulted in greater sample mass reduction than non-elutriated samples, and was between 59.0–97.3% for the tested soils. Furthermore, no statistically significant (p < 0.05) differences were observed in particle quantification or polymer mass between methods, and no differences were observed for polymer or size distribution. Additionally, 33% more polymers were positively identified (R2 = 70%) by ATR-FTIR analysis in elutriated samples compared to non-elutriated soils. The mass reduction provided by elutriation allows for the processing of larger sample volumes, leading to greater accuracy and sensitivity in detecting microplastics. As such, we recommend elutriation be performed as a pretreatment step to extract microplastics from soils.
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Viability of elutriation for the extraction of microplastics from environmental soil samples
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Researchers evaluated whether elutriation, a technique previously used for marine sediments, could effectively extract microplastics from freshwater and terrestrial soils. Testing across five different soil types in Oklahoma, they found that elutriation achieved substantial sample mass reduction without losing microplastic particles. The study demonstrates that elutriation is a viable and efficient preprocessing step for extracting microplastics from diverse soil types.
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