Quantitative Analysis of Selected Plastics in High-Commercial-Value Australian Seafood by Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Microplastic contamination of the marine environment is widespread, but the extent to which the marine food web is contaminated is not yet known. The aims of this study were to go beyond visual identification techniques and develop and apply a simple seafood sample cleanup, extraction, and quantitative analysis method using pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry to improve the detection of plastic contamination. This method allows the identification and quantification of polystyrene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene, and poly­(methyl methacrylate) in the edible portion of five different seafood organisms: oysters, prawns, squid, crabs, and sardines. Polyvinyl chloride was detected in all samples and polyethylene at the highest total concentration of between 0.04 and 2.4 mg g–1 of tissue. Sardines contained the highest total plastic mass concentration (0.3 mg g–1 tissue) and squid the lowest (0.04 mg g–1 tissue). Our findings show that the total concentration of plastics is highly variable among species and that microplastic concentration differs between organisms of the same species. The sources of microplastic exposure, such as packaging and handling with consequent transference and adherence to the tissues, are discussed. This method is a major development in the standardization of plastic quantification techniques used in seafood.

The fate of plastic in the ocean environment – a minireview

“…PMD is also ingested by several marine organisms, including commercially important species. 18,19,[87][88][89][90] PMD is thus removed from the water column through ingestion and at least temporarily stored in marine organism. Though PMD is thus incorporated in marine food web structures, it is not clear how efficiently it is transferred from prey to predator.…”

Paradigms to assess the human health risks of nano- and microplastics

“…Rational use of the existing literature data The absence of standardization in NMP analysis poses difficulties in comparability of NMP occurrence data present in the literature. Furthermore, not infrequently, authors report difficulties with blank samples [139], and some methodologies used in published studies have been recently questioned as results were related to background contamination and potential erroneous identification of plastic particles [140,141]. Therefore, data from individual published case studies should be carefully evaluated before using them in the exposure assessment of HRA-NMP.…”

Field-Portable Microplastic Sensing in Aqueous Environments: A Perspective on Emerging Techniques

“…Matsui et al (2020) have presented an algorithm for identifying the composition of heterogeneous mixtures of polymers, successfully identifying four polymer types from an ocean water sample [41]. In terms of what MP characteristics this technique measures, it has been mostly explored for plastic type identification, but has shown potential for relative mass quantification of polymer types in heterogeneous MP samples [40,[42][43][44]84].…”

“…Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). Demonstrated accuracy for MP polymer type identification (ID)[39][40][41][42][43][44]. Can characterize the identity of sample contaminants.…”