Microplastics in wastewater: microfiber emissions from common household laundry

Abstract

Microplastics are widely recognized as a category of emergent pollutants that can cause complex ecotoxicological effects. Synthetic fibers released during the washing of textiles are a relevant source of microplastics, which reach aquatic ecosystems from sewer discharges, even when there is retention in wastewater treatment plants. In this paper, we determined microfiber emissions from washing of textiles in a domestic environment, by collecting wastewater from washings of a mix of clothing from a household of 4 people. It is the first time the characterization of microplastic emission from textiles washing is performed in real household conditions. Results estimated an average emission rate of 18,000,000 synthetic microfibers for a reference load of 6 kg of synthetic fibers. Only 7% of the synthetic fibers found were larger than 500 μm in length, 40% were between 100 and 500 μm, and 53% were between 50 and 100 μm.

Plastic microfibre pollution: how important is clothes’ laundering?

“…In the first report of this phenomenon, that of Browne et al (2011), 1900 microfibres/wash/garment was the estimated release; later studies have used more exact measurements, such as mg.kg À1 , microfibres.m-2 (see Table 1). The effects of variables such as type of textile, detergent, temperature and washing action have been determined, some of them using special small simulation machines, in which parameters can be specified and held constant (e.g., Hernandez et al, 2017;Carney Almroth et al, 2018), whilst others (e.g., Lant et al, 2020;Dalla Fontana et al, 2020;Galvão et al, 2020; K€ arkk€ ainen and Sillanp€ a€ a 2021) have employed domestic washers of various types. Such studies can give useful insights into the effects of changes in laundry procedures and could be useful in the development of a standard test method.…”

Microplastic Types in the Wastewater System—A Comparison of Material Flow-Based Source Estimates and the Measurement-Based Load to a Wastewater Treatment Plant

“…Instead, the polymer distribution from textiles on the Swedish market [30] was used. The number of particles was converted to mass by using average dimensions of polyester fibres (length 0.1-0.8 mm; diameter 0.011-0.026 mm) obtained from laundry studies [32,34,36,44] and the densities of the polymers.…”

Exposure to microplastic fibers does not change fish early life stage development of three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

“…We used red-pink polyester fibers, which also showed strong autofluorescence with red filter settings (excitation 511-551 nm, emission 573-613 nm), since they are easy to distinguish in color and shape from other natural or worn fibers that might occur as contaminants in the laboratory. For the present study, we filtered fibers through a < 300 μm sieve to resemble the fiber size class that is released during household washing, which can reach the environment as laundry effluent (93% of the released fibers were below 500 μm in length [14]).…”

“…Similarly, accelerated blood flow velocities and heart rates, and slightly inhibited hatching rates, were observed in a first study conducted with microplastic fibers (polyethylene terephthalate (PET), 3-5 mm) and zebrafish embryos [13]. For the present study, we chose smaller microplastic fibers (< 0.3 mm) similar to the fiber size class produced during household washing [14,15], which enters the environment as laundry effluents [16]. Microplastic fibers < 300 μm slip through neuston nets commonly used for sampling fibers in environmental surveillance [17].…”