Weathering of plastic SODIS containers and the impact of ageing on their lifetime and disinfection efficacy

García-Gil, Ángela; Molina-Ramírez, María Dolores; García-Muñoz, Rafael A.; Marasini, Ramesh; Buck, Lyndon; McGuigan, Kevin G.; Marugán, Javier

doi:10.1016/j.cej.2022.134881

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The increase in CI value is primarily incurred by thermal and photooxidation. 73 They change the crystalline and chain structure at the molecular level, and the correlation between CI values and degrees of crystallinity is sometimes linear. 63 Such mechanisms usually play important roles in the micro and macro morphologies of cracks.…”

Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crack Patterns of Environmental Plastic Fragments

Deng

Zheng

et al. 2022

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Secondary microplastics usually come from the breakdown of larger plastics due to weathering and environmental stress cracking of plastic wastes. In the present study, 5013 plastic fragments were collected from coastal beaches, estuary dikes, and lake banks in China. The fragment sizes ranged from 0.2 to 17.1 cm, and the dominant polymers were polypropylene and polyethylene. Cracks were observed on the surfaces of 49–56% of the fragments. Based on the extracted crack images, we proposed a general crack pattern system including four crack types with specific definitions, abbreviations, and symbols. The two-dimensional spectral analysis of the cracks suggests that the first three patterns showed good regularity and supported the rationality of the pattern system. Some crack metrics (e.g., line density) were closely correlated with the carbonyl index and additives (e.g., phthalate esters) of fragments. For crack investigation in field, we proposed a succinct protocol, in which five crack ranks were established to directly characterize the degree of cracking based on the line density values. The system was successfully applied to distinguish the differences in crack features at two representative sites, which indicates that crack pattern is a useful tool to describe the morphological changes of plastic surfaces in the environment.

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Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crack Patterns of Environmental Plastic Fragments

Deng

Zheng

et al. 2022

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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“…37 UV stabilizers added during the manufacturing process can absorb most of the irradiation from photoaging of the contact lenses, and the deterioration of the UV stabilizers would lead to the degradation of the contact lenses and an increase of the carbonyl index. 38 The contact lenses in group F, which released the most microplastics with the smallest area, were the thinnest of all contact lenses at 0.035 mm. In addition, the released microplastics and contact lenses after 900 h of irradiation in group F have the highest carbonyl indexes, which means the aging degree of the contact lenses in group F was the highest.…”

Section: ■ Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…The increase in the carbonyl index is mainly caused by thermal and photooxidation, and it can be affected by the additives in different brands of contact lenses . UV stabilizers added during the manufacturing process can absorb most of the irradiation from photoaging of the contact lenses, and the deterioration of the UV stabilizers would lead to the degradation of the contact lenses and an increase of the carbonyl index . The contact lenses in group F, which released the most microplastics with the smallest area, were the thinnest of all contact lenses at 0.035 mm.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Content Screening Discovers Microplastics Released by Contact Lenses under Sunlight

Liu,

Ling,

Jiang

et al. 2023

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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The widespread use of plastic products leads to the ubiquity of microplastics in daily life, while the release of microplastics from long-used contact lenses has not been reported due to the limitations of conventional detection methods. Here, we established a new and rapid method to capture and count microplastics by using a high-content screening system. This method can simultaneously measure the diameter, area, and shape of each plastic particle, and the reliability and applicability of this method were verified with commercial microplastics. It is estimated that 90,698 particles of microplastics could be released from a pair of contact lenses during a year of wearing. The microplastics in the leachates were confirmed to be released from the contact lenses by scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy fingerprint analysis. Our study reveals an undiscovered pathway of microplastic direct exposure to humans, highlighting the urgent need to assess the potential health risks caused by eye exposure to microplastics.

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“…The container dimensions were: height 526 mm, base length 240 mm, base depth 263 mm; with an average wall thickness of 0.55 mm. Preliminary studies of the optical and mechanical properties of these containers showed that the UV-A transparency of the plastic material was adequate and that the resistance of the 25 L PET TJC to falls and impact was adequate to ensure its suitability to the harsh field conditions 26 , 32 . 70 TJC units were used for the experiments to evaluate the microbial quality of the water, and 1650 TJC units were transported to Ethiopia for distribution to the communities for the health impact assessment in the field.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar water disinfection in large-volume containers: from the laboratory to the field. A case study in Tigray, Ethiopia

García-Gil

García-Muñoz

Martínez-García³

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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The lack of safe drinking water affects communities in low-to-medium-income countries most. This barrier can be overcome by using sustainable point-of-use water treatments. Solar energy has been used to disinfect water for decades, and several efforts have been made to optimise the standard procedure of solar water disinfection (SODIS process). However, the Health Impact Assessment of implementing advanced technologies in the field is also a critical step in evaluating the success of the optimisation. This work reports a sustainable scaling-up of SODIS from standard 2 L bottles to 25 L transparent jerrycans (TJC) and a 12-month field implementation in four sites of Tigray in Ethiopia, where 80.5% of the population lives without reliable access to safe drinking water and whose initial baseline average rate of diarrhoeal disease in children under 5 years was 13.5%. The UVA dose required for 3-log reduction of E. coli was always lower than the minimum UVA daily dose received in Tigray (9411 ± 55 Wh/m2). Results confirmed a similar decrease in cases of diarrhoea in children in the implementation (25 L PET TJC) and control (2 L PET bottles) groups, supporting the feasibility of increasing the volume of the SODIS water containers to produce safer drinking water with a sustainable and user-friendly process.

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Weathering of plastic SODIS containers and the impact of ageing on their lifetime and disinfection efficacy

Cited by 13 publications

References 31 publications

Crack Patterns of Environmental Plastic Fragments

Crack Patterns of Environmental Plastic Fragments

High-Content Screening Discovers Microplastics Released by Contact Lenses under Sunlight

Solar water disinfection in large-volume containers: from the laboratory to the field. A case study in Tigray, Ethiopia

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