Release of Microplastics from Reusable Kitchen Plasticware and Generation of Thermal Potential Toxic Degradation Products in the Oven

Juri Jander,Uta Lewin-Kretzschmar,Andreas Siegbert Fath,Thomas Brock,Martin Knoll,Darius Hummel,Felix Broghammer,Adrian Monteleone,Tizian Neumaier,Sophie Stürmer

doi:10.3390/app12052535

Abstract

Plastics are one of the most important technical materials at present, yet they are associated with a whole series of environmental problems such as micro-and nanoplastics or their plasticizers, which have become increasingly relevant in recent years. While there are many studies that focus on microplastics (MPs) introduced into the human body through commercially produced food, there are nearly none that consider the MPs we ingest through homemade food made with plastic kitchen utensils such as mixing bowls. To investigate this, samples were obtained by exposing different plastic bowls made of acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene (ABS), polypropylene (PP), melamine, polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS), and styrene–acrylonitrile (SAN), to mechanical stress and then analyzed via infrared spectroscopy. This not only raises the question of whether microplastics are incorporated into foods but also the extent to which the degradation products produced by thermal stress in an oven could play a toxicological role. Degradation products were generated by pyrolysis and analyzed afterwards using gas chromatography mass spectrometry. There were differences in the number of microplastic particles abraded by the different types of plastic, with the most consisting of melamine (898 particles) and the least consisting of low-density polyethylene (331 particles). There were also differences in the number and relevance of the thermal degradation products for the different plastics, so that a human toxicological assessment would have to be evaluated in further work.

Highlights

Since the industrialization of plastics in the 1950s, their applications have increased, and they have become an important technical material in the world, but the waste they produce has become an increasing global problem over the years
It is unknown if the ingestion of microplastics released from take-out food containers poses a risk to human health [7], but recently published studies on mice [8] demonstrate the ability of polystyrene microplastic particles to cross the blood–brain barrier and affect the immune system
While there are many studies that focus on MPs introduced into the human body through commercially produced food [13–16], there are nearly none that consider the MPs we ingest through homemade food made with plastic kitchen utensils such as mixing bowls

Summary

Introduction

Since the industrialization of plastics in the 1950s, their applications have increased, and they have become an important technical material in the world, but the waste they produce has become an increasing global problem over the years. While there are many studies that focus on MPs introduced into the human body through commercially produced food [13–16], there are nearly none that consider the MPs we ingest through homemade food made with plastic kitchen utensils such as mixing bowls. This raises the question of whether microplastics are incorporated into foods and the extent to which the degradation products produced by thermal stress in an oven could play a toxicological role. These products were treated using pyrolysis, analyzed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS), and subsequently measured

Sample Material

Sample Preparation

Microplastic Analysis (FT-IR Spectroscopy)

Analysis of Thermal Decomposition Products

Microplastic Analysis (FTIR Spectroscopy)

Analysis of Thermal Decomposition Products (Pyrolysis and GC-MS)