Identification of polymer types and additives in marine microplastic particles using pyrolysis-GC/MS and scanning electron microscopy.

By E. Fries, Jens H. Dekiff, Jana Willmeyer, Marie-Theres Nuelle, M. Ebert, Dominique Remy. Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, 2013

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Any assessment of plastic contamination in the marine environment requires knowledge of the polymer type and the additive content of microplastics. Sequential pyrolysis-gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (Pyr-GC/MS) was applied to simultaneously identify polymer types of microplastic particles and associated organic plastic additives (OPAs). In addition, a scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray microanalyser was used to identify the inorganic plastic additives (IPAs) contained in these particles. A total of ten particles, which were optically identified as potentially being plastics, were extracted from two sediment samples collected from Norderney, a North Sea island, by density separation in sodium chloride. The weights of these blue, white and transparent fragments varied between 10 and 350 μg. Polymer types were identified by comparing the resulting pyrograms with those obtained from the pyrolysis of selected standard polymers. The particles consisted of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene, polystyrene, polyamide, chlorinated PE and chlorosulfonated PE. The polymers contained diethylhexyl phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, diisobutyl phthalate, dimethyl phthalate, benzaldehyde and 2,4-di-tert-butylphenol. Sequential Py-GC/MS was found to be an appropriate tool for identifying marine microplastics for polymer types and OPAs. The IPAs identified were titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs), barium, sulphur and zinc. When polymer-TiO2 composites are degraded in the marine environment, TiO2-NPs are probably released. Thus, marine microplastics may act as a TiO2-NP source, which has not yet been considered.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/089b418582581d29605c54163477963588ed5781

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Citations in the corpus

Microplastics in freshwater systems: A review on occurrence, environmental effects, and methods for microplastics detection. (2017, methodology): “The current techniques for quantitative and qualitative research of microplastics include pyrolysis gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (Fabbri et al., 2000; Fabbri, 2001; Fries et al., 2013; Nuelle et al., 2014), Raman spectroscopy (Cole et al.”
Identification of microplastic in effluents of waste water treatment plants using focal plane array-based micro-Fourier-transform infrared imaging. (2017, neutral): “Methods used for MP determination range from visual sorting via a dissection microscope over gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) (Fries et al., 2013) to Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and RAMAN microscopy (Fischer et al.”
Airborne microplastics: Consequences to human health? (2018, positive): “…by using blanks or open petri dishes, some authors detected contamination of their samples or their working environments (Davidson and Asch, 2011; Foekema et al., 2013; Fries et al., 2013; Nuelle et al., 2014; Woodall et al., 2015), probably caused by airborne microplastics released from clothes.”
Microplastics in the surface sediments from the Beijiang River littoral zone: Composition, abundance, surface textures and interaction with heavy metals. (2017, background): “Though metals are commonly added as inherent load (e.g., catalysts, pigments, and stabilizers) during plastic manufacturing (Becker et al., 2010; Fries et al., 2013; Nakashima et al., 2012; Noik et al., 2015; Takahashi et al., 2008; W€ager et al., 2011), EDS spectra displayed great difference in…”
Presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in food, with particular focus on seafood (2016, neutral): “Titanium dioxide nanoparticles as well as barium, sulfur and zinc have been are examples of inorganic additives found in microplastics (Fries et al., 2013).”
Microplastics in the Marine Environment: Distribution, Interactions and Effects (2015, methodology): “This trend is also true for shorttailed shearwater (Puffinus tenuirostris) from the North Sea (Vlietstra and Parga 2002).”
Microplastics in freshwater ecosystems: what we know and what we need to know (2014, background): “[24] detected various plastic additives in MP, including some well-known EDCs (e.”