Microplastic occurrence after conventional and nanofiltration processes at drinking water treatment plants: Preliminary results
Abstract
Microplastics (MP) have been detected in almost all matrices, including drinking water, and assessing the contamination of drinking water with this type of pollution is of the utmost sanitary importance. This study aims to evaluate MP contamination of inlet river water and drinking water at three drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) in the Paris region in France. Each plant performs water treatment processes that are efficient for particulate matter removal such as coagulation-flocculation, sand filtration, and granular activated carbon filtration. One of the plants also has a parallel water treatment file that uses microfiltration and nanofiltration processes. This file was investigated to assess its efficiency compared to the others. To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate MP contamination in a DWTP using nanofiltration processes. The drinking water distribution network was also investigated, with samples taken at three network points. Microplastics contamination of sizes 25–5,000 μm was characterized using micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (μ-FTIR) in large volume samples (500 L) with complete mapping of each sample. Concentrations ranging from 7.4 to 45.0 MP/L were found in inlet water while concentrations ranging from blank level (0.003 MP/L) to 0.260 MP/L were found in outlet drinking water (overall removal rate above 99%). Polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyethylene terephthalate were the main polymers found both at the inlet and…
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.