Abstract
Substantial efforts have been undertaken to isolate and characterize plastic contaminants in different sample matrices in the last years as the ubiquitous presence of particulate plastic in the environment has become evident. In comparison, plastic particles 90%. In a proof-of-principle setup, it was demonstrated that operating two continuous flow centrifuges sequentially at different rotational speeds bears the potential to enable size- and density-selective sampling of the colloidal fraction. A significant fraction of the spiked nanoplastic particles (76% ± 5% (uc)) could be separated from a model mixture of natural particles with a well-defined mean size of approximately 3 µm. While the certified reference plankton material used here was quantitatively retained in the first centrifuge rotor together with 23.0% ± 2.2% of the effective dose of the spiked nanoplastic, the remaining fraction of the nanoplastic could be recovered in the second rotor (53% ± 5%) and the effluent (24.4% ± 2.4% (uc)). Based on the good retention
Highlights
Particulate plastic has gained high importance as an emerging environmental contaminant for researchers, authorities and society as a whole (Stöven et al, 2015; Gago et al, 2016; Rochman et al, 2016; Peng et al, 2017; Burns and Boxall, 2018; Science Advice for Policy by European Academies, 2019)
To confirm that the Pd was completely incorporated into the polymer matrix and there was not free Pd remaining from particle synthesis, 100 μL of the suspension was filled up to 10 mL with Milli-Q water (MQW) and centrifuged at 10000 rpm for 7 h (Centrifuge 5804 R, Eppendorf AG, Hamburg, Germany)
Four continuous flow centrifugation (CFC) experiments were conducted which focused on the influence of the pump rate on the retention efficiency (1) under simplified conditions and (2) under realistic environmental conditions, (3) the influence of recirculation and (4) the potential of CFC to enable nanometer-size-selective sampling
Summary
Particulate plastic has gained high importance as an emerging environmental contaminant for researchers, authorities and society as a whole (Stöven et al, 2015; Gago et al, 2016; Rochman et al, 2016; Peng et al, 2017; Burns and Boxall, 2018; Science Advice for Policy by European Academies, 2019). NPPs are expected to exhibit different properties than particles >1 μm (Mattsson et al, 2015) as easier translocation and uptake into cells are probable. Nanoplastic beads were shown to enhance toxicity of persistent organic pollutants toward Rotifers (Jeong et al, 2018), hinder algal photosynthesis (Bhattacharya et al, 2010) and exhibit different adverse effects on human lung epithelial cells (Xu et al, 2019). There are no validated standard operation procedures to analyze particulate plastic (Löder and Gerdts, 2015; Besley, 2017), despite some activities aiming at methodological standardization from institutions such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/TC 61/SC 14) and JPI Oceans. No certified reference materials exist which could enable a valid comparison of the performance of different sampling, sample processing and characterization approaches (Frias et al, 2019)
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