Development of a multi-spectroscopy method coupling μ-FTIR and μ-Raman analysis for one-stop detection of microplastics in environmental and biological samples

Current techniques for microplastics (MPs) analysis are diverse. However, most techniques have individual limitations like the detection limit of spatial resolution, susceptibility, high cost, and time-consuming detection. In this study, we proposed a multi-spectroscopy method coupling μ-FTIR and μ-Raman analysis for one-stop MPs detection, in which barium fluoride was used as the substrate alternative to the filter membrane. Compared with commonly used filter membranes (alumina, silver, PTFE and nylon membranes), the barium fluoride substrate showed better spectroscopic detection performance on microscopic observation, broader transmittable wavenumber range for μ-FTIR (750-4000 cm) and μ-Raman (250-4000 cm) detection, thus suitable for the multi-spectroscopy analysis of spiked samples. Further, the real environmental and biological samples (indoor air, bottled water and human exhaled breath) were collected and detected to verify the applicability of the developed multi-spectroscopy method. The results indicated that the average content of detected MPs could be increased by 30.4 ± 29.9 % for indoor air, 17.1 ± 13.2 % for bottled water and 38.4 ± 16.0 % for human exhaled breath, respectively in comparison with widely used μ-Raman detection, which suggested that MPs exposure might be underestimated using single spectroscopy detection. Moreover, the majority of underestimated MPs were colored and smaller sized (<50 μm) MPs, which could pose higher risks to human body. In addition, the proposed method consumed lower sample pre-treatment costs and was environmental-friendly since the barium fluoride substrate could be used repeatedly after being cleaned by organic solvent with reliable results (n = 10, CV = 10 %, ICC = 0.961), which reduced the cost of MPs detection by at least 2.49 times compared with traditional methods using silver membrane.