Effects of spatial and seasonal factors on the characteristics and carbonyl index of (micro)plastics in a sandy beach in Aveiro, Portugal

Prata, Joana C.; Reis, Vanessa; Paço, Ana; Martins, Patrícia; Cruz, Ana Paula Capuano da; Costa, João Pinto da; Rocha-Santos, Teresa

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135892

Cited by 79 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Indeed, the FTIR acquisitions highlighted the formation of new peaks in the polymer spectra consecutively to the ageing of virgin polymers in artificial conditions. As previously observed by other authors [ 57 , 58 , 59 ], the regions reflecting ageing-related changes (hydroxyl groups, peaks from 3100 to 3700 cm −1 , carbon double bonds, 1600 and 1680 cm −1 and carbonyl groups, 1690 and 1810 cm −1 ) appeared greatly modified compared to the pristine materials in each type of MPs.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Effects and Impacts of Different Oxidative Digestion Treatments on Virgin and Aged Microplastic Particles

et al. 2022

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Although several sample preparation methods for analyzing microplastics (MPs) in environmental matrices have been implemented in recent years, important uncertainties and criticalities in the approaches adopted still persist. Preliminary purification of samples, based on oxidative digestion, is an important phase to isolate microplastics from the environmental matrix; it should guarantee both efficacy and minimal damage to the particles. In this context, our study aims to evaluate Fenton’s reaction digestion pre-treatment used to isolate and extract microplastics from environmental matrices. We evaluated the particle recovery efficiency and the impact of the oxidation method on the integrity of the MPs subjected to digestion considering different particles’ polymeric composition, size, and morphology. For this purpose, two laboratory experiments were set up: the first one to evaluate the efficacy of various digestion protocols in the MPs extraction from a complex matrix, and the second one to assess the possible harm of different treatments, differing in temperatures and volume reagents used, on virgin and aged MPs. Morphological, physicochemical, and dimensional changes were verified by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Fourier Transformed Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The findings of the first experiment showed the greatest difference in recovery rates especially for polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene terephthalate particles, indicating the role of temperature and the kind of polymer as the major factors influencing MPs extraction. In the second experiment, the SEM analysis revealed morphological and particle size alterations of various entities, in particular for the particles treated at 75 °C and with major evident alterations of aged MPs to virgin ones. In conclusion, this study highlights how several factors, including temperature and polymer, influence the integrity of the particles altering the quality of the final data.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Effects and Impacts of Different Oxidative Digestion Treatments on Virgin and Aged Microplastic Particles

et al. 2022

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“…The degree of oxidation of the plastics was indicated by the CI value, which is an effective parameter in field observations for a wide range of materials. − In this study, CI ranged from 0.1 to 23.3 (average 1.4 ± 0.8) for all the samples and was significantly correlated with most of the morphological metrics, including line density, centroid density, wavelength, perimeter, and area of crack patterns (Figure A). The degree of oxidation increased with the degree of crack development, i.e., increasing the amounts of lines and nets.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Crack Patterns of Environmental Plastic Fragments

Deng

Zheng

et al. 2022

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Secondary microplastics usually come from the breakdown of larger plastics due to weathering and environmental stress cracking of plastic wastes. In the present study, 5013 plastic fragments were collected from coastal beaches, estuary dikes, and lake banks in China. The fragment sizes ranged from 0.2 to 17.1 cm, and the dominant polymers were polypropylene and polyethylene. Cracks were observed on the surfaces of 49–56% of the fragments. Based on the extracted crack images, we proposed a general crack pattern system including four crack types with specific definitions, abbreviations, and symbols. The two-dimensional spectral analysis of the cracks suggests that the first three patterns showed good regularity and supported the rationality of the pattern system. Some crack metrics (e.g., line density) were closely correlated with the carbonyl index and additives (e.g., phthalate esters) of fragments. For crack investigation in field, we proposed a succinct protocol, in which five crack ranks were established to directly characterize the degree of cracking based on the line density values. The system was successfully applied to distinguish the differences in crack features at two representative sites, which indicates that crack pattern is a useful tool to describe the morphological changes of plastic surfaces in the environment.

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“…Nowadays, beaches signify the primary concentration of global travel, vacation and leisure, thereby making them to become the icons of modern tourism (Holden, 2000;Pereira & Dantas, 2019;Retama et al, 2019). Nonetheless, the concentration of people and their activities in beaches are capable of causing the degradation of the surroundings ( Prata et al, 2020). These could have effects on the environment and the tourists' recreational experiences, which may be detrimental to the host interests (Fullana & Ayuso, 2001;Tretiakova et al, 2019).…”

Section: Review Of Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%