A new method for determining microplastic content in environmental samples | Eine neue Methode für die Bestimmung des Mikroplastik-Massenanteils in Umweltproben
2020
Spacek, Stefan | Mallow, Ole | Schwarzböck, Therese | Fellner, Johann | Rechberger, Helmut
The increasing pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems with microplastics is a severe problem for the environment. Especially the high resistance of plastics to degradation processes causes a constant accumulation of microplastics in the environment. The development of suitable methods for the accurate and simple determination of microplastics is a vital factor to evaluate existing microplastic accumulations in the environment. The method presented here describes a thermoanalytical method for mass-based microplastic determination. The EA-OEM (Elemental Analysis Overdetermined Equation Method) was developed at TU Wien and makes use of the distinct differences in the elemental composition of plastic, biogenic and inorganic materials to quantitatively measure the content of microplastics in environmental samples. The EA-OEM has been optimized in past years using polymer spiked samples and additionally evaluated in an inter-laboratory round robin test. The aim of this paper is to summarize recent investigations. The results demonstrate good recovery rates for microplastics in polymer spiked samples (in the range of 93 to 110%). Furthermore, the limit of detection was estimated with 1 wt% microplastics. The EA-OEM poses a comparatively simple and cost-effective method to determine microplastics in environmental samples.
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