Adsorption of Cadmium, Copper and Lead on Polypropylene and Polyethylene Microplastics

Microplastic is drawing attention of researchers and public as it is ubiquitous, and becoming a severe threat to the marine ecosystem and human being. Heavy metals and microplastics pollution seems to be having interaction even though both are considered different classes of pollutants. This experimental study for a period of seven days was done with polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) to study the relation between microplastics and heavy metals (Cd, Cu and Pb). Microwave Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (MP-AES) was use to analyze the heavy metals concentration in the water. The main aim of this experiment is to study the relation between microplastics and heavy metals. The effects of types of microplastics and adsorption kinetic will also be studied. The study has shown that both type of microplastics adsorbed the three heavy metals. The adsorption of heavy metals happened up until second day of experiment and followed by the release of heavy metals after that. ANOVA analysis was done and it showed that the heavy metals adsorbed are not affected by the types of microplastics used. The adsorption kinetic was calculated using partition coefficient. This showed that Pb was adsorbed the most in both microplastics with a higher value of partition coefficient. The surface analysis of microplastics also showed that there is no difference after seven days of experiment. As a result, this study shows that there is an interaction between microplastics and heavy metals. The interaction could probably harm the aquatic organisms and will be transferred through food chain and harm human being as well. Finally, it is learned that microplastics is the vector of heavy metals through this study.