Microplastic and nanoplastic analysis in drinking water and indoor air with Raman micro-spectroscopy
Abstract
The retainment of microplastics (MPs) down to 1 μm by a Danish drinking water plant fed with groundwater was quantified using Raman micro-spectroscopy (μRaman).The inlet and outlet were sampled in parallel triplicates over five consecutive days of normal activity.For each triplicate, approximately 1 m 3 of drinking water was filtered with a custom-made device employing 1 μm steel filters.The MP abundance was expressed as MP counts per liter (N/L) and MP mass per liter (pg/L), the latter being estimated from the morphological parameters provided by the μRaman analysis.Hence the treated water held on average 1.4 MP counts/L, corresponding to 4 pg/L.The raw water entering the sand filters held a higher MP abundance, and the overall efficiency of the treatment was 43.2% in terms of MP counts and 75.1% in terms of MP mass.The reason for the difference between count-based and mass-based efficiencies was that 1-5 μm MP were retained to a significantly lower degree than larger ones.Above 10 μm, 79.6% of all MPs were retained by the filters, while the efficiency was only 41.1% below 5 μm.The MP retainment was highly variable between measurements, showing an overall decreasing tendency over the investigated period.Therefore, the plastic elements of the plant (valves, sealing components, etc.) likely released small-sized MPs due to the mechanical stress experienced during the treatment.The sub-micron fraction (0.45-1 μm) of the samples was also qualitatively explored, showing that…
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