What are we drinking?

Ez a mű a Creative Commons Nevezd meg! - Ne add el! - Ne változtasd! 4.0 Nemzetközi Licenc feltételeinek megfelelően felhasználható.Plastics are artificially manufactured, synthesized products, the volume and diversity of their industrial production, which started in the last century, is growing rapidly – with global annual production doubling at the turn of the millennium. Plastic products are now indispensable in our everyday life, but they are artificial materials, and the many plastic products have been accumulating on Earth for more than a hundred years, mostly as waste.The pieces of plastic scattered in the environment are mainly crushed by mechanical forces and UV radiation, and over time they turn into micro (<5 mm) and even smaller, nano (<1 µm) plastic particles. They are dispersed in the air, water and soil and enter the food chain by inhalation and ingestion and penetrate everywhere in the body.In the main chapters of the book, we present the most important properties of microplastics, discuss their occurrence in different types of water (surface water, drinking water – bottled or tap water; and non-drinking water – industrial waters and wastewater), describe the health effects of micro or nanoplastics, their legal regulation (EU and Hungarian), detection options, analytical methods and, finally, water production technologies free of micropollutants and microplastics in the case of different raw waters.