Purifying or polluting? Tracing membrane-based microplastics release for long-term drinking water safety
Abstract
Microplastics (MPs), recognized as a growing threat to human health due to their bioaccumulative potential, necessitate urgent investigation of exposure pathways. Drinking water treatment, particularly membrane filtration designed to ensure safety, presents a paradoxical risk: polymeric membranes themselves may release MPs when subjected to specific stresses, potentially offsetting part of the purification benefit. To address this critical knowledge gap, this study systematically quantified and characterized MPs release from three representative membrane materials under simulated drinking water treatment conditions, specifically pre-oxidation and chemical cleaning. Results demonstrate that both processes substantially exacerbate MPs generation, primarily through induced physicochemical degradation of membrane polymers. Distinct differences in release profiles across membrane types underscore the influence of material-specific susceptibility and degradation pathways, emphasizing the pivotal role of membrane selection in mitigation strategies. Crucially, the predominance of released MPs fell within the 1-5 µm safety-sensitive size class, which was consistently observed across conditions in this study. By interpreting these intrinsic release patterns within realistic plant-scale operating windows, this work clarifies how membrane-derived MPs relate to overall removal and identifies operating conditions under which membrane processes remain net purifying over time. This work…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Green Chemistry: A Framework for a Sustainable Future
- Nano/micro-plastic, an invisible threat getting into the brain
- Emerging contaminants antibiotic resistance genes and microplastics in the environment: Introduction to 21 review articles published in CREST during 2018–2022
- Water Resources and Sustainable Development
- Nano- and microplastics in the workplace
- Water Enclosure and World-Literature: New Perspectives on Hydro-Power and World-Ecology
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.