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Microplastic removal across ten drinking water treatment facilities and distribution systems
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Researchers characterized microplastic removal across ten drinking water treatment facilities and found that conventional municipal treatment achieved greater than 97.5% removal, primarily through granular media filtration or ultrafiltration. Untreated source waters contained between approximately 1,200 and 7,200 microplastic particles per liter, with polypropylene, polyethylene, and polyamide being the most common types. The findings provide valuable data on microplastic exposure through drinking water and the effectiveness of existing treatment processes.
The performance of conventional and advanced drinking water treatment processes for the removal of microplastics is poorly understood due to the use of a wide range of methods for sample collection, isolation, and analysis that make direct comparison among studies challenging. In this study, microplastic (>2 µm) removal across ten drinking water treatment facilities, as well as their presence in source waters and distribution systems, was characterized. Municipal drinking water treatment facilities achieved >97.5% removal, primarily due to chemically assisted granular media filtration or ultrafiltration. In untreated source waters, concentrations ranged from 1193 ± 64 to 7185 ± 64 particles/L, with polypropylene, polyethylene, polyamide, and plastic copolymers representing the most common polymer types identified. These findings provide insight regarding microplastic exposure via drinking water, as well as treatment process performance for their removal which may be used to inform the development and implementation of future regulations and/or guidelines.
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Researchers evaluated the performance of both advanced and conventional drinking water treatment processes for removing microplastics, finding that advanced methods such as ultrafiltration substantially outperform standard coagulation and filtration. Most conventional treatment plants leave a meaningful fraction of microplastics in finished drinking water.
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Researchers developed a new method for detecting and characterizing microplastics in drinking water samples from municipal and private treatment systems. They found microplastics in treated drinking water, though at lower concentrations than in source water, and identified fibers as the most common type. The study demonstrates that conventional water treatment does not completely remove microplastics from drinking water.
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Researchers tested eight water treatment works in England and Wales and found that conventional treatment processes removed 99.99% of microplastics, reducing raw water concentrations of about 5 particles per liter to near-zero in drinking water. Polyethylene, PET, and polypropylene were the most common polymers found in the raw water supply.
Occurrence and removal of microplastics by advanced and conventional drinking water treatment facilities
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Researchers tracked the fate of microplastics through drinking water treatment processes, finding that conventional treatment steps like coagulation, sedimentation, and filtration removed the majority of microplastics but did not eliminate them entirely.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.