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. 2020 Oct 1:737:140279.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140279. Epub 2020 Jun 16.

Covid-19 face masks: A potential source of microplastic fibers in the environment

Oluniyi O Fadare  1 , Elvis D Okoffo  2
Affiliations

Covid-19 face masks: A potential source of microplastic fibers in the environment

Oluniyi O Fadare et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Unlabelled Image

Keywords: Covid-19; Face masks: Plastic pollution; Microfibers; Microplastics; Single-use plastics.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

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Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Process of producing nanofibers through electrospinning used in face mask production (Zafar et al., 2016).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Collection of various Covid-19 face masks of different types and colours from an ocean and terrestrial environment in Hong Kong and Nigeria respectively. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Face masks at different stages of degradation in the environment and typical FT-IR spectra of the degrading fibers, outer layer (a) and inner layer (b).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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