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Microplastics in seawater: a study of pretreatment, separation, and recovery.
Summary
Researchers developed and compared pretreatment, separation, and recovery methods for isolating microplastics from seawater samples, addressing the methodological diversity that limits comparability across marine monitoring studies. The study identified optimal combinations of techniques that improve microplastic recovery efficiency while minimizing contamination and sample loss.
Plastic is a widely used material in daily life due to its lightweight, durability, corrosion-resistance and cost-effectiveness. According to data from Plastic Europe, there has been a steady increase in plastic production over the years, reaching approximately 390.7 million tonnes in 2021. Despite the challenges posed by Covid-19 pandemic, there has been no decrease in the production; however, notable shift within the production sector has been observed. Among these, a class of plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, known as microplastics (MPs), raises widespread concern due to their impact on water quality. MPs enter the trophic network through marine organisms that ingest them and they are transferred along the food chain through bioaccumulation and biomagnification, ultimately reaching humans. Sea water presents a complex matrix with high levels of organic and mineral matter, which can present challenges at various procedural stages in microplastic isolation, thus hindering accurate quantification. Therefore, the development of effective extraction methods is crucial to enable the reliable detection and precise quantification of microplastics within complex samples such as seawater. In this scenario, an additional challenge arises from the necessity to remove organic material without altering the polymer of interest, which itself is also an organic compound. Up to today, there isn't a standardized procedure for the pretreatment of seawater samples and different types of solvents and analytical conditions are applied. Therefore, in order to carry out a characterization of microplastics in seawater, preliminary experiments were conducted to assess the impact of different pre-treatment procedures on microplastics. In this study, different solvents for MPs digestion were tested in combination with various separation techniques, such as filtration and density separation. Finally, recovery tests were carried out to evaluate the recovery resulting from the different pretreatments, using a Fluorescence Microscope. Also see: https://micro2024.sciencesconf.org/559468/document