Assessment of Microplastics in the Environment – Fibres: The Disregarded Twin?

Abstract

Dealing with the pollution of plastics into the environment is considered one of the major challenges of the current century. Especially microplastic pollutions are considered a significant threat to human life, especially since once these plastic particles make their way into the environment, removing them is almost impossible. Unfortunately, when researches look for microplastics in the environment, synthetic fibres are too often disregarded. This is a mistake considering that a big part of human clothing consists purely of synthetic fibres, meaning they are omnipresent in every part of human activity and so are their emissions. This work takes a critical look at the state of the art analysis methods for microplastics in soil, water and air, with a special focus on their ability (or inability) to detect fibrous materials. A case study in the form of a critical evaluation was made to highlight common problems when detecting microplastic fibres, it focused primarily on the sampling of large water volumes. Another case study explores the difficulties of microscopy in the analysis of microplastics. Furthermore, the sources of fibre pollution and which pathways they take in the environment before the end up in the maritime system are explored. Finally, this work makes a call for the creation and enforcement of standardized methods, which would potentially solve many of the current problems.

Particle Shedding from Cotton and Cotton-Polyester Fabrics in the Dry State and in Washes

“…On the other hand, the presence of microplastic particles (MP) in natural and wastewater, sediment, soil, aquatic organisms, and air has been linked to textile sources [19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…The fragmentation [26], degradation [27], ageing [28], washing [29], and drying [30] of synthetic textile products are all possible sources of MP particles in environment [24]. Such products used for wet and dry cleaning of surfaces (mops), isolated synthetic fibres from vacuuming and drying, and fibres that come loose from clothing during home washing are the most common sources of MP in the environment [31,32].…”

Effective Degradation of Cigarette Butts via Treatment with Old Landfill Leachates

“…Global production and use of plastics has increased up to 400 million metric tonnes in 2015 and is going to double in the next 20 years leading to increasingglobal concerns of CO2 emissions and environmental accumulation of primary plastics (macroplastics and mesoplastics ranged in size up to 5 mm) [1,2] and their degraded secondary plastics. These include microplastics (MPs) ranging from 0.1 to 100 µm [3] and nanoplastics (NPs) with particle size under 100 nm [4]. Accumulation of MPs and NPs in air, soil, and aquatic ecosystems is one of the most complicated global challenges the world is facing now.…”

Tex2mat – Next Level Textile Recycling With Biocatalysts

“…These textiles are also a significant source of microplastic emission into the environment through the washing of clothing, etc. (Piribauer, Laminger, Ipsmiller, Koch, & Bartl, 2019).…”