Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) as a Source of Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment.

By Fionn Murphy, C. Ewins, F. Carbonnier, B. Quinn. Environmental Science and Technology, 2016

1,710 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Municipal effluent discharged from wastewater treatment works (WwTW) is suspected to be a significant contributor of microplastics (MP) to the environment as many personal care products contain plastic microbeads. A secondary WwTW (population equivalent 650 000) was sampled for microplastics at different stages of the treatment process to ascertain at what stage in the treatment process the MP are being removed. The influent contained on average 15.70 (±5.23) MP·L(-1). This was reduced to 0.25 (±0.04) MP·L(-1) in the final effluent, a decrease of 98.41%. Despite this large reduction we calculate that this WwTW is releasing 65 million microplastics into the receiving water every day. A significant proportion of the microplastic accumulated in and was removed during the grease removal stage (19.67 (±4.51) MP/2.5 g), it was only in the grease that the much publicised microbeads were found. This study shows that despite the efficient removal rates of MP achieved by this modern treatment plant when dealing with such a large volume of effluent even a modest amount of microplastics being released per liter of effluent could result in significant amounts of microplastics entering the environment. This is the first study to describe in detail the fate of microplastics during the wastewater treatment process.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc7e774fe60e00e24babee31cc6dde8046dcba70

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. I. Napper
2. S. Mason
3. J. Paul Chen
4. Jingyi Li
5. Huihui Liu
6. E. Zeng
7. C. Svendsen
8. D. Spurgeon

In Pollution

1. I. Napper
2. S. Mason
3. J. Paul Chen
4. Jingyi Li
5. Huihui Liu
6. E. Zeng
7. C. U. Emenike
8. D. Spurgeon

Citations in the corpus

• Microplastics in freshwater and terrestrial environments: Evaluating the current understanding to identify the knowledge gaps and future research priorities. (2017, background): “…given the large volumes passing through wastewater treatment plants the 299 remaining 5%, or less, of the microplastics that are not filtered out will likely represent a large number 300 and mass entering the freshwater environment in effluent (Murphy et al., 2016; Ziajahromi et al., 301 2016).”
• Wastewater treatment plants as a pathway for microplastics: Development of a new approach to sample wastewater-based microplastics. (2017, background): “Further, a recent study by Murphy et al. (2016) estimated that 6.5×107 microplastics per 90 day could enter the aquatic environment from a secondary WWTP in Scotland, despite a removal 91 rate of 98%.”
• Solutions to microplastic pollution - Removal of microplastics from wastewater effluent with advanced wastewater treatment technologies. (2017, methodology): “According to the results, we also suggest including small size fractions ( 100 µm) into 263 the examination when evaluating the role of WWTPs as a point source of MPs into the 264 M AN US CR IP T AC CE PT ED ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 13 environment, as particularly smaller MPs are left in effluents after”
• Microplastic pollution is widely detected in US municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent. (2016, methodology): “…consistent with expectations (Eriksen et al., 2013; McCormick et al., 2014; Rochman et al., 2015b) and the limited number of facilities for which data were previously available (Baltic Marine, 2014; Magnusson and Wahlberg, 2014; Martin and Eizhvertina, 2014; Carr et al., 2016; Murphy et al., 2016).”
• A Global Perspective on Microplastics (2020, background): “Murphy et al. (2016) noted that most of the buoyant microplastics, including the majority of microbeads from personal care products, were entrained in the floating grease fraction.”
• Distribution and importance of microplastics in the marine environment: A review of the sources, fate, effects, and potential solutions. (2017, background): “Microplastic beads present in facial cleansers, synthetic clothing, toothpaste, and scrubs get into the marine ecosystem through domestic and industrial drainage systems and wastewater treatment plants (Cole et al., 2011; Murphy et al., 2016).”
• Microplastics in freshwater systems: A review on occurrence, environmental effects, and methods for microplastics detection. (2017, background): “Among them, wastewater treatment is one of the dominant sources of microplastics (Magnusson and Nor en, 2014; Talvitie, 2014; Estahbanati and Fahrenfeld, 2016; Murphy et al., 2016; Dyachenko et al., 2017; Mintenig et al., 2017).”