TY - JOUR
T1 - Separation, characterization and identification of microplastics and nanoplastics in the environment
AU - Fu, Wanyi
AU - Min, Jiacheng
AU - Jiang, Weiyu
AU - Li, Yang
AU - Zhang, Wen
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the New Jersey Water Resources Research Institute (NJWRRI) Grant (Project Number: 2018NJ399B ), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 21677015 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/6/15
Y1 - 2020/6/15
N2 - Microplastics (MPs) have globally been detected in aquatic and marine environments, which has raised scientific interests and public health concerns during the past decade. MPs are those polymeric particles with at least one dimension <5 mm. MPs possess complex physicochemical properties that vary their mobility, bioavailability and toxicity toward organisms and interactions with their surrounding pollutants. Similar to nanomaterials and nanoparticles, accurate and reliable detection and measurement of MPs or nanoplastics and their characteristics are important to warrant a comprehensive understanding of their environmental and ecological impacts. This review elaborates the principles and applications of diverse analytical instruments or techniques for separation, characterization and quantification of MPs in the environment. The strength and weakness of different instrumental methods in separation, morphological, physical classification, chemical characterization and quantification for MPs are critically compared and analyzed. There is a demand for standardized experimental procedures and characterization analysis due to the complex transformation, cross-contamination and heterogeneous properties of MPs in size and chemical compositions. Moreover, this review highlights emerging and promising characterization techniques that may have been overlooked by research communities to study MPs. The future research efforts may need to develop and implement new analytical tools and combinations of hyphenated technologies to complement respective limitations of detection and yield reliable characterization information for MPs. The goal of this critical review is to facilitate the research of plastic particles and pollutants in the environment and understanding of their environmental and human health effects.
AB - Microplastics (MPs) have globally been detected in aquatic and marine environments, which has raised scientific interests and public health concerns during the past decade. MPs are those polymeric particles with at least one dimension <5 mm. MPs possess complex physicochemical properties that vary their mobility, bioavailability and toxicity toward organisms and interactions with their surrounding pollutants. Similar to nanomaterials and nanoparticles, accurate and reliable detection and measurement of MPs or nanoplastics and their characteristics are important to warrant a comprehensive understanding of their environmental and ecological impacts. This review elaborates the principles and applications of diverse analytical instruments or techniques for separation, characterization and quantification of MPs in the environment. The strength and weakness of different instrumental methods in separation, morphological, physical classification, chemical characterization and quantification for MPs are critically compared and analyzed. There is a demand for standardized experimental procedures and characterization analysis due to the complex transformation, cross-contamination and heterogeneous properties of MPs in size and chemical compositions. Moreover, this review highlights emerging and promising characterization techniques that may have been overlooked by research communities to study MPs. The future research efforts may need to develop and implement new analytical tools and combinations of hyphenated technologies to complement respective limitations of detection and yield reliable characterization information for MPs. The goal of this critical review is to facilitate the research of plastic particles and pollutants in the environment and understanding of their environmental and human health effects.
KW - Characterization
KW - Detection
KW - Microplastics
KW - Nanoplastics
KW - Plastic pollution
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137561
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137561
M3 - Article
C2 - 32172100
AN - SCOPUS:85081133102
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 721
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 137561
ER -