RT journal article
T1 Preparation of synthetic micro- and nano plastics for method validation studies
A1 Hrovat, Blaz
A1 Uurasjärvi, Emilia
A1 Viitala, Mirka
A1 Franco del Pino, Ana Amelia
A1 Mänttäri, Mika
A1 Papamatthaiakis, Nikolaos
A1 Haapala, Antti
A1 Peiponen, Kai-Erik
A1 Roussey, Matthieu
A1 Koistinen, Arto
A2 Tecnologías del Medio Ambiente
K1 Microplastics
K1 Validation
K1 Raman spectroscopy
K1 FTIR spectroscopy
K1 Imaging
AB Microplastic (MP) pollution is a persisting global problem. Accurate analysis is essential in quantifying the effects of microplastic pollution and develop novel technologies that reliably and reproducibly measure microplastic content in various samples. The most common methods for this are FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. Coloured, standardized beads are often used for method validation tests, which limits the conclusions to a very specific case rarely observed in the natural environment. This study focuses on the preparation of reference micro- and nanoplastics via cryogenic milling and shows their use for FTIR and Raman method validation studies. MPs can now be reproducibly milled from various plastics, offering the advantages of a better representation of MPs in real environment. Moreover, this study highlights issues with the current detection methods, up to now considered as the most reliable ones for MP detection and identification. Such issues, e.g. misidentification, will need to be addressed in the future. Additionally, milled MPs were used in experiments with commercial high-resolution imaging device, enabling a possible in-situ optical detection of microplastics. These experiments represent a step forward in understanding MPs in a water sample and provide a basis for a more accurate detection and identification directly from water, which would considerably reduce the time of analysis.
PB Elsevier
SN 1879-1026
YR 2024
FD 2024
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/33704
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/33704
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 08-nov-2026