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Removal and reincorporation of microplastics at several stages of two seawater reverse osmosis plants that provide drinking water to Barcelona metropolitan area
Summary
Researchers tested two seawater desalination plants that supply drinking water to Barcelona and found they remove over 90% of microplastics from seawater, making the treatment process highly effective. Interestingly, one late-stage treatment step (called remineralization, which adds minerals back into the water) actually introduced small amounts of new microplastics, a finding that suggests plants should routinely check water quality at this stage. The good news: even with this minor addition, drinking water from desalination plants is not a major source of microplastic exposure compared to things like bottled water or seafood.
Desalination to produce drinking water has emerged as a vital strategy to address water scarcity, especially in the Mediterranean region. Present study evaluated the efficiency of microplastics (MPs) removal at each treatment unit of two seawater reverse osmosis plants (SWROPs) that receive seawater from the Mediterranean Sea and produce drinking water. Scientific information regarding the characterisation of MPs through the desalination of seawater is currently very scarce. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation to quantify MPs levels and characteristics in the effluents of individual treatment stages of a regularly operated SWROP producing drinking water. SWROPs influent seawater showed different MPs concentrations (2294 vs. 414 MPs/m 3 ), however their effluents had similar levels of MPs (130 vs. 69 MPs/m 3 ). MPs removal rates of both SWROPs were high (94.3 and 83.3 %), especially if cellulosic materials are not taken into account (93.6 and 91.9 %). While the effluent of the reverse osmosis presented very low MPs levels and most MPs (>97 %) were removed from water, the remineralization step was identified as a source of MPs incorporation in the effluent of both plants, thus enhancing the need of performing a periodical quality control of this treatment stage. In any case, the intake of water from SWROPs effluents is not a relevant source of MPs exposure for humans compared with other potential pathways, such as the consumption of bottled water or the intake of seafood.