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Extraction of microplastic from marine sediments: A comparison between pressurized solvent extraction and density separation
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Researchers compared pressurized solvent extraction against density separation for extracting microplastics from marine sediments, evaluating the efficiency, accuracy, and practicality of each method to help establish consensus analytical protocols for deep-sea and coastal sediment samples.
Due to the ecotoxicological effects, microplastics are considered a threat for the marine environment. Recent reports indicate their presence not only in subsurface water and in coastal beach sediments, but also in the deep-sea. Notwithstanding, there is still not a scientific consensus about the analytical procedure to be applied for their determination. In this work we compared the performance of two extraction methods: pressurized solvent extraction (PSE) and density separation. Sea sand and seafloor sediments were spiked with known amounts of polystyrene (PS), polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) microplastics and submitted to both the extraction procedures. Results showed that the PSE ensured higher recoveries for the smaller size particle fractions (89,2 ± 1.1% in the 50-150 μm range) whereas the density separation enabled precise recoveries for the larger size particles (SD = 1,5%). No significant differences in terms of blanks control were highlighted.
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