The pretreatment method in marine organisms and sediment for microplastics analysis by FTIR using “Cylindrical microplastics fractionator”

Abstract

For the detection of microplastics (MPs) in aquatic biota using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), the ability to remove organic matter (OM) in pretreatment steps is essential to increase the time efficiency of MPs measurement and method uniformity. In principle, decreasing OM can be achieved by increasing the number of pretreatment steps. However, MPs are lost in proportion to the number of transfers between each step. Therefore, we have created a "Cylindrical MPs Fractionator" composed of commercially available materials. This container allows for a six-step pretreatment process that is designed to increase the removal capacity of OM with only one transfer to prevent the loss of MPs.•Biological or sediment samples are placed in the extractor and subjected to chemical treatment and density separation.•Residues containing MPs are obtained on filters by vacuum filtration.•After additional chemical treatment of the obtained residue, the components of the residue are identified by microscopic FTIR.This method removed 99.3% of OM and recovered 88.5% of MPs. The presenting method confirmed that this can be used with the same process for 11 organisms and sediments from estuarine ecosystem in Japan as models.