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Characterization Techniques for Quantifying Environmental Microplastics
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This book chapter reviews the analytical methods used to detect, identify, and quantify microplastics across different environmental media — water, sediment, air, and biota — covering techniques like FTIR spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and electron microscopy. A standardized, well-validated toolkit for characterizing microplastics is foundational to producing comparable data across the thousands of studies now being conducted worldwide.
The use of plastics in our diaspora and its improper disposal often made its way to landfill sites and natural water bodies. The size of microplastics can vary from as low as few nm to 100 μm. Microplastics are also found in different shapes, such as fiber, spherical, or flaky forms, due to physiochemical impacts from the local environment. Due to such varied sizes and shapes, it is difficult to characterize microplastics quantitatively and qualitatively. Also, identifying microplastics in different environments poses different challenges and thus requires specific approaches. The identification and characterization often begin with separation of microplastics and their identification using different analytical and characterization tools. In this chapter, we will be discussing the different approaches to characterizing microplastics present in various environments. We will also discuss the mechanism of analyzing microplastics using different methods and highlight the current challenges and limitations of different methodologies in characterizing microplastics.
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Researchers reviewed the analytical tools most commonly used for identifying and quantifying microplastics, focusing on FTIR and Raman spectroscopy as the two primary methods. The review compared their strengths and limitations and provided guidance for choosing between them based on particle size, sample matrix, and research objectives.
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This book chapter reviews the range of sophisticated analytical instruments used to detect and measure microplastics in environmental samples, including Raman spectroscopy, FTIR, electron microscopy, and pyrolysis-GC-MS. It explains the strengths and limitations of each technique, helping researchers choose the right tool for the job. As microplastic research expands, having standardised and sensitive detection methods is critical for producing comparable data across studies.
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