The fate of microplastics in an Italian Wastewater Treatment Plant

Microplastics Removal from Treated Wastewater by a Biofilter

“…All the identified MPs were small-sized particles, with the major dimension below of 300 µm, and the minor below 100 µm. The absence of particles larger than 300 µm indicates that the conventional treatment of Avedøre wastewater treatment plant is efficient to remove large sized MPs, a finding which is in agreement with for example Talvitie et al [24] and Magni et al [37]. Despite the small sizes in general, there was still a tendency that larger-sized particles were retained by the filters, and the median value of particle size seemed to decrease with the depth into the biofilter ( Figure 5, Table S1).…”

“…The high presence of these polymer types were also reported in other wastewater treatment plant effluents [35][36][37] and also in urban stormwater runoff [8,38]. This is not surprising, since these are the polymers in the most demand [39], and wastewater has been identified as an important vector to transport MP to the environment [23,26,37]. The distribution of MP in the water between the four filtration levels varied; however, with no specific trend in terms of the polymer distributions.…”

Hazard evaluation of plastic mixtures from four Italian subalpine great lakes on the basis of laboratory exposures of zebra mussels

“…The first fraction was gathered from the manta net through many water washes, and samples were immediately stored in glass vials with 30% hydrogen peroxide at 4 °C until observations began (Sighicelli et al, 2018). To collect plastics from the manta trawl for the ecotoxicological analyses, 1 L of NaCl hypersaline solution (1.2 g/cm 3 ; Magni et al, 2019b) was used for each sample to separate suspended particulate matter from plastic debris, which was then stored in glass jars at 4 °C pending the following exposures. No information is available about the possible changes of chemicals adsorbed by MPs by the use of NaCl hypersaline solution and until now alternative methods to separate MPs from the enormous amount of organic and inorganic matter collected in natural samples did not exist.…”

“…We filtered the supernatant on 8 µm cellulose nitrate membrane filters (Sartorius TM 50 mm), using a vacuum pump, and then digested the samples with 15% H2O2 overnight under a laminar flow hood. To monitor the eventual atmospheric contamination by plastics (especially fibres), a nitrate cellulose membrane filter was processed as a blank (Magni et al, 2019b). All debris (natural and synthetic) extracted by the mussels was quantified and characterized in terms of shape, dimension, colour and polymer composition using a Fourier Transform Infrared Microscope System (µFT-IR; Spotlight 200i equipped with Spectrum Two, PerkinElmer).…”

“…All debris (natural and synthetic) extracted by the mussels was quantified and characterized in terms of shape, dimension, colour and polymer composition using a Fourier Transform Infrared Microscope System (µFT-IR; Spotlight 200i equipped with Spectrum Two, PerkinElmer). Spectra of debris was acquired in attenuated total reflectance (ATR) mode, compared with library standard spectra and accepted (matching factor ≥ 0.7) after visual examinations (Magni et al, 2019b). This detection was not possible for specimens from L. Garda due to the lack of mussels.…”