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Behavior of Microplastics in Wastewater Treatment Processes and Estimation of Its Loading to Lake Biwa
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Japanese researchers measured microplastic behavior across four wastewater treatment plants flowing into Lake Biwa, finding 30 types of plastics in influent with concentrations of 158–5,000 particles/m3; while treatment removed most particles, smaller microplastics under 100 µm were not adequately captured even by rapid sand filtration.
本研究では，下水処理場の処理工程におけるマイクロプラスチック（以下，MPs）の挙動と琵琶湖への負荷量を把握することを主目的として，2017年11月～2018年2月に4か所の流域下水処理場（分流式）の流入水，放流水，処理工程別において100μm以上のMPsを，流入水と放流水ではさらに10～100μmのMPsの分析を行った．その結果，下水，処理水，汚泥，スカムなどから合計30種類のMPsが検出され，流入水中のMPs濃度は158～5,000個/m3であった．放流水中のMPs濃度は0.3～2.2個/m3であり，放流先の琵琶湖水中のMPs濃度と同等であった．一方，10～100μmのMPsの除去率は76.3％であった．100μm未満のMPsの除去は急速砂ろ過を行っても不十分であると示唆された．4つの下水処理場からの合計負荷量は501,630個/日と推計され，晴天時の琵琶湖流入河川からの総負荷量とほぼ同じであることが示された．
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