Microplastics Analysis – Automatic Analysis by Dynamic Particle Imaging Analysis.

Building Consensus Methods to Support Environmental Laboratories
Oral Presentation

Prepared by R. Marfil-Vega, A. Lim, C. Macey, L. Zhao, S. Dahal, W. Lipps
Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, 7102 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD, 21046, United States


Contact Information: rmmarfilvega@shimadzu.com; 410-910-0884

ABSTRACT

Plastic pollution is one of the major environmental issues faced at global scale. Micro- and nanoplastics enter the environment as manufactured products in cosmetics and other industrial products and as breakdown products of plastics of larger size (macroplastics). Despite the interest in assessing and mitigating the risk of microplastics in the environment, several questions remain unanswered: which attributes of the particles are relevant to be measured? What is the accuracy and precision required? Attenuated Total Reflectance coupled with Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-IR) is normally used for quantifying number of particles and assessing their size as well as composition. Dynamic particle imaging analysis (DIA) is also a suitable technology for the automatic determination of microplastics shape and particle count. In this poster we will demonstrate the performance, in terms of accuracy and precision, for counting and sizing microplastics by both ATR-IR and DPI. A guidance tool will also be presented to help laboratories in identifying appropriate workflows for their monitoring end-goals.