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Limitations of Current Remediation Technologies for Aquatic Microplastics and the Case for Integrated Treatment Systems
Summary
Tiny plastic particles have already built up in our lakes, rivers, and oceans—and eventually in our drinking water and food chain—so just making less plastic won't undo the damage already there. This review looked at existing cleanup methods (like filtering, chemical treatments, and using microbes to break plastic down) and found that none of them alone can fully remove or destroy these particles. The takeaway: cleaning up water supplies will likely require combining several methods together, which matters because reducing microplastics in our water is a key step toward reducing our own exposure to them.
The accumulation of micro- and nanoplastics in aquatic environments represents a legacy pollution burden that source-reduction measures alone cannot address. This paper evaluates the operational envelopes and mechanical limitations of physical separation (coagulation-flocculation, deep-bed filtration, and membrane bioreactors), advanced oxidation processes (Fenton, photocatalysis, and ozonation), and biological degradation pathways. No single technology provides a complete solution across diverse particle distributions; this work outlines the structural case for staged, hybrid treatment trains to achieve genuine biospheric mineralization.