Interaction of chemical contaminants with microplastics: Principles and perspectives.

Microplastics are of major concerns for society and is currently in the focus of legislators and administrations. A small number of measures to reduce or remove primary sources of microplastics to the environment are currently coming into effect. At the moment, they have not yet tackled important topics such as food safety. However, recent developments such as the 2018 bill in California are requesting the analysis of microplastics in drinking water by standardized operational protocols. Administrations and analytical labs are facing an emerging field of methods for sampling, extraction, and analysis of microplastics, which complicate the establishment of standardized operational protocols. In this review, the state of the currently applied identification and quantification tools for microplastics are evaluated providing a harmonized guideline for future standardized operational protocols to cover these types of bills. The main focus is on the naked eye detection, general optical microscopy, the application of dye staining, flow cytometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-Ir) and microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and microscopy, thermal degradation by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (py-GC-MS) as well as thermo-extraction and desorption gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TED-GC-MS). Additional techniques are highlighted as well as the combined application of the analytical techniques suggested. An outlook is given on the emerging aspect of nanoplastic analysis. In all cases, the methods were screened for limitations, field work abilities and, if possible, estimated costs and summarized into a recommendation for a workflow covering the demands of society, legislation, and administration in cost efficient but still detailed manner.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003702820921465

Critical Assessment of Analytical Methods for the Harmonized and Cost-Efficient Analysis of Microplastics:

Source, occurrence, migration and potential environmental risk of microplastics in sewage sludge and during sludge amendment to soil.

https://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/216884/1/1-s2.0-S2214158820300180-main.pdf

Microplastics in Mediterranean coastal area: toxicity and impact for the environment and human health

Extraction in the context of analytical chemistry (analytical-scale extraction) is defined as \"the transfer of target analyte from one phase to a different phase where further processing and analysis occurs\".1 The target analyte is thus isolated from the original sample, and transferred into an extract. In this way, the target analyte is separated from major sample matrix components. The sample is often a liquid, and the target analyte is extracted into (a) another liquid or (b) onto a solid. Extraction according to (a) and (b) are termed liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and solid-phase extraction (SPE), respectively, and involve partition and mass transfer across liquid-liquid and liquid-solid boundaries. Partition is based on intermolecular forces involving hydrophobic, dispersion, dipole, hydrogen bond, and ionic interactions. The molecular interactions are highly influenced by the chemical properties of the extraction phase (extraction chemistry). In this review we discuss new extraction phases, which are currently investigated in the scientific literature. In addition, we discuss new technical formats (geometries) for extraction. Emerging extraction strategies as stated in the manuscript title, are thus defined as new extraction phases and new technical formats in this review.

Inés García-Agüera

Papers

PAHs, pesticides, personal care products and plastic additives in plastic debris from Spanish Mediterranean beaches.