Airborne microplastics in Bandung and Osaka: Concentration and characteristics

Abstract

Plastic is a material that is widely used in everyday life. It can be degraded into small-sized fragments (< 5 mm) called microplastics (MPs). Research on MPs has primarily focused on the aquatic environment, while studies on airborne MPs (AMPs) are still in their early stages. In this study, AMPs at two locations (Bandung (Indonesia) and Osaka (Japan)) were characterized by attenuated total imaging and micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, as a preliminary study. The concentrations of AMPs in total suspended particulates (TSP) in Bandung and Osaka ranged from 1.03 to 14.27 particles/m3 and from 0.63 to 3.29 particles/m3, respectively. AMPs in both locations were fragmented, with dominant Feret diameters ranging from 1 to 20 μm.

Atmospheric Microplastic Particulate in Urban Roadside: Case of Bandar Lampung City, Indonesia

“…Airborne microplastics and nanoplastics are becoming more common in various environments, particularly in urban areas and megacities like Paris, France (Dris et al, 2017), London, United Kingdom ( (Wright et al, 2020) and Dongguan, China (Cai et al, 2017) The information of their occurrence exist little and still in early stage (Hidayat et al, 2024;Jahandari, 2023a). Indonesia, microplastic abundance in the air has been detected and provided in some studies.…”

“…Indonesia, microplastic abundance in the air has been detected and provided in some studies. For instance, the proven occurrence of microplastics in Surabaya city (Syafei et al, 2019) or in the Greater Bandung Region (Hidayat et al, 2024;Sya na et al, 2022). However, the number of studies was the lowest quantities compared to other environment (Cahya Alam & Rachmawati, 2020; Mulyasari et al, 2023).…”