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Role of polyamide microplastics as vector of parabens in the environment: An adsorption study
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Researchers studied how polyamide microplastics adsorb parabens — preservatives commonly found in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals — and found that smaller plastic particles absorb significantly more of these chemicals. In real water samples including tap and wastewater, polyamide microplastics picked up 53–82% of parabens present, suggesting they act as carriers that could concentrate and transport these hormone-disrupting chemicals through aquatic environments.
The prevalence of microplastics in the aquatic environment has become a global problem. Their capacity to adsorb pollutants may influence in their environmental fate, bioavailability, and toxicity to biota. This work provides a systematic study to characterize the role of polyamide (PA) as vector of parabens (PBs) in the environment. The effect of PA and influence of environmental factors in the adsorption process were investigated. The amount of PBs adsorbed onto 50μm PA at 30 mg/L of PBs follows the order: butylparaben (1.440 mg/g) > propylparaben (1.321 mg/g) > ethylparaben (0.995 mg/g) > methylparaben (0.543 mg/g), which is positively correlated with their log Kow and length of the ester alkyl chain. Physical adsorption forces such as hydrophobic interaction, pore filling and hydrogen bond dominated the adsorption mechanism The size of the PA particles has been resulted in a significant factor; a higher adsorption capacity was remarkable when decreasing PA particle size (from 10.3% for 3 mm to 79.5% for 50 μm (0.5 mg/L PBs)). The adsorption percentage increases with pH until the PBs pKa value and decrease significantly at pH>pKa values due to repulsion forces. Salinity increases adsorption capacity until at 2% NaCl content while the dissolved organic matter negatively affects and leads to low adsorption. Our results reveal that PBs were potentially adsorbed onto PA in real water matrices (average of 82% in tap water, 72% in surface water, 76% in effluent wastewater, and, 53% in influent wastewater (0.5 mg/L PBs)), which may have important environmental implications.
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