Characterization and Quantification of Microplastics

Today, microplastics are contained in soil, air, and all types of water, including groundwater and drinking water. Characterization and analysis of microplastics is a very complicated set of steps because there are mixtures of different kinds of polymers, their size varies on a huge scale, and they are in water samples combined with the inorganic materials (sand) remains of animals and plants. Organic materials or natural polymers are difficult to distinguish from synthetic polymers, creating microplastics. Common microplastics are mostly based on partly degraded polyolefins, which float on water due to their low density. The largest share of microplastics in surface and groundwater is made up of fibre fragments released from textile products. Almost a third of microplastics are released mainly during washing. These fibrous microplastics are often results of abrasion and their properties are far from plastics of the same chemical nature. This chapter is mainly oriented to present basic steps of microplastics collection, sample preparation, purification, and analysis by standard and advanced instrumental methods. The fibrous microplastics forms, morphology and extraordinary properties are discussed, because they are potential sources of problems dealing with their occurrence.