Comparision of air sampling techniques to analyse microplastics during plastic recycling

Recently, microplastics have been observed in the atmosphere, and due to their small size, airborne microplastics can be directly inhaled posing a health risk to humans. Therefore, it is important to quantitatively analyse and to identify possible sources of microplastic particles in air samples. During our study, air samples were collected from a plastic grinding laboratory during PET grinding procedures. Grinding procedure is a common practice in plastics recycling. Despitethe importance of the topic, the available scientific information is very limited. In our experiment, air samples were collected using three different types of active air sampling instruments (two of these are capable of collecting large volumes of air and are commonly used for environmental air sampling, while the third was a personal sampler). The collected particles were then separated into two size fractions: particles above 10 µm were analysed by µFTIR, while particles under 10 µm were prepared for analysis using Pyrolysis GC-MS. Microplastics were detected in all samples above 10 µm, and differences between sampling devices were observed. The highest detected microplastic concentration above 10 µm was 2806 particles/m3. Our main findings indicate that sampling devices can influence the reported microplastic concentration, and that plastic grinding can be considered as a significant source of airborne microplastics. Also see: https://micro2024.sciencesconf.org/558793/document