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Morphology and hygroscopicity of nanoplastics in sea spray
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Researchers characterized the morphology, surface composition, and hygroscopicity of nanoplastics in sea spray aerosol, revealing how these particles mix internally and externally with marine organic matter and sea salt in the atmosphere.
The role of airborne nanoparticles in atmospheric chemistry and public health is largely controlled by particle size, morphology, surface composition, and coating. Aerosol mass spectrometry provides real-time chemical characterization of submicron atmospheric particles, but analysis of nanoplastics in complex aerosol mixtures such as sea spray is severely limited by challenges associated with separation and ionization of the aerosol matrix. Here we characterize the internal and external mixing state of synthetic sea spray aerosols spiked with 150 nm nanoplastics. Aerosols generated from pneumatic atomization and from a sea spray tank are compared. A humidified tandem differential mobility analyzer is used as a size and hygroscopicity filter, resulting in separation of nanoplastics from sea spray, and an inline high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer is used to characterize particle composition and ionization efficiency. The separation technique amplified the detection limit of the airborne nanoplastics. A salt coating was found on the nanoplastics with coating thickness increasing exponentially with increasing bulk solution salinity, which was varied from 0 to 40 g kg-1. Relative ionization efficiencies of polystyrene and sea salt chloride were 0.19 and 0.36, respectively. The growth-factor derived hygroscopicity of sea salt was 1.4 at 75% relative humidity. These results underscore the importance of separating airborne nanoplastics from sea salt aerosol for detailed online characterization by aerosol mass spectrometry and characterization of salt coatings as a function of water composition. The surface coating of nanoplastic aerosols by salts can profoundly impact their surface chemistry, water uptake, and humidified particle size distributions in the atmosphere.
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This study examined what happens when nanoplastics become incorporated into sea spray aerosols — the tiny droplets that burst into the air when waves break — finding that nanoplastics alter the structure and composition of the lipid films that coat these airborne droplets. Since these lipid layers influence how aerosols behave chemically in the atmosphere, nanoplastics could be subtly changing atmospheric chemistry and cloud formation in ocean regions. This is a relatively unexplored pathway by which plastic pollution may have broader environmental consequences beyond the ocean surface.
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Researchers found that secondary organic aerosol derived from alpha-pinene partitions onto hydrophobic polystyrene nanoplastics in the atmosphere, forming partially-engulfed morphology particles that exhibit hygroscopic growth. The study reveals that nanoplastics can serve as condensation nuclei for organic aerosol formation, altering both the physical state of plastic particles and their atmospheric water-uptake behaviour.
Physical and Chemical Characterisation of Nanoplastic Aerosol
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Researchers physically and chemically characterized nanoplastic aerosol particles to better understand their atmospheric behavior, finding that particle size and surface chemistry influence their capacity for long-range atmospheric transport and deposition in remote environments.
Microplastics and nanoplastics in the marine-atmosphere environment
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Researchers quantified marine-atmospheric microplastic fluxes and found that between 0.013 and 25 million metric tons of micro- and nanoplastics may be transported through the atmosphere and deposited into oceans annually. They propose a global observation strategy with harmonized sampling methods to reduce the high uncertainty in these estimates.
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