Microplastic particles in the aquatic environment: A systematic review

Affiliations

¹ School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea; Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh; Centre for Green Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia.
² School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea; Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh.
³ Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh.
⁴ Centre for Green Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia.
⁵ School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea.
⁶ Centre for Green Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. Electronic address: JunLiang.Zhou@uts.edu.au.
⁷ School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: mhyoon@gist.ac.kr.

PMID: 33631597
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145793

Review

Microplastic particles in the aquatic environment: A systematic review

Mohammad Boshir Ahmed et al. Sci Total Environ. 2021.

. 2021 Jun 25:775:145793.

doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145793. Epub 2021 Feb 12.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea; Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh; Centre for Green Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia.
² School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea; Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh.
³ Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh.
⁴ Centre for Green Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia.
⁵ School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea.
⁶ Centre for Green Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. Electronic address: JunLiang.Zhou@uts.edu.au.
⁷ School of Material Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: mhyoon@gist.ac.kr.

PMID: 33631597
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145793

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) pollution has become one of the most severe environmental concerns today. MPs persist in the environment and cause adverse effects in organisms. This review aims to present a state-of-the-art overview of MPs in the aquatic environment. Personal care products, synthetic clothing, air-blasting facilities and drilling fluids from gas-oil industries, raw plastic powders from plastic manufacturing industries, waste plastic products and wastewater treatment plants act as the major sources of MPs. For MPs analysis, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS), Py-MS methods, Raman spectroscopy, and FT-IR spectroscopy are regarded as the most promising methods for MPs identification and quantification. Due to the large surface area to volume ratio, crystallinity, hydrophobicity and functional groups, MPs can interact with various contaminants such as heavy metals, antibiotics and persistent organic contaminants. Among different physical and biological treatment technologies, the MPs removal performance decreases as membrane bioreactor (> 99%) > activated sludge process (~98%) > rapid sand filtration (~97.1%) > dissolved air floatation (~95%) > electrocoagulation (> 90%) > constructed wetlands (88%). Chemical treatment methods such as coagulation, magnetic separations, Fenton, photo-Fenton and photocatalytic degradation also show moderate to high efficiency of MP removal. Hybrid treatment technologies show the highest removal efficacies of MPs. Finally, future research directions for MPs are elaborated.

Keywords: Biological process; Chemical technology; Contaminant interactions; Microplastics analysis; Physical treatment.

PubMed Disclaimer

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.

Publication types

Actions

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources
- Elsevier Science
Other Literature Sources
- scite Smart Citations
Miscellaneous
- NCI CPTAC Assay Portal

Save citation to file

Email citation

Add to Collections

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search

Create a file for external citation management software

Your RSS Feed

Microplastic particles in the aquatic environment: A systematic review

Affiliations

Microplastic particles in the aquatic environment: A systematic review

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Other Literature Sources

Miscellaneous