Page - 51 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

Analysis,Occurrence, andDegradation ofMicroplastics in theAqueousEnvironment SaschaKlein, IanK.Dimzon, JanEubeler, andThomasP.Knepper Abstract Synthetic polymers are one of the most significant pollutants in the aquatic environment. Most research focused on small plastic particles, so-called microplastics (particle size, 1–5,000 μm). Compared to macroplastics, the small size complicates their determination in environmental samples and demands for more sophisticated analytical approaches. The detectionmethods ofmicroplastics reported in thepastarehighlydiverse.Thischapter summarizesdifferent strategies for the sampling of water and sediment and sample treatments, including the separation of plastic particles and removal of natural debris that are necessary prior the identification of microplastics. Moreover, the techniques used for the identification of plastics particles are presented in this chapter. With theapplicationof themethoddescribed in thischapter,microplasticswere detected in freshwater systems, suchas riversand lakesworldwide.Theabundance of microplastics reported in the studies varied in more than three orders of magnitude. Furthermore,microplastics arenotuniform,as therearemanydifferent typesof synthetic polymers commercially available. Consequently, a variety of different polymer types ispresent in theaquatic environment.Theknowledgeon the typeof polymerprovidesadditional information for scientists: the typeofpolymerdictates itsphysicochemicalpropertiesandthedegradation.Theenvironmentaldegradation of plastics is an important factor for the formation, distribution, and accumulation of microplastics in the aquatic system. Thus, this chapter also summarizes the degradationpathways for synthetic polymers in the environment. S.Klein, I.K.Dimzon, andT.P.Knepper (*) HochschuleFreseniusUniversity ofAppliedSciences, 65203 Idstein,Germany e-mail: knepper@hs-fresenius.de J.Eubeler FlowTestGmbH,Katlenburg-Lindau,Germany M.Wagner, S.Lambert (eds.),FreshwaterMicroplastics, HdbEnvChem58,DOI10.1007/978-3-319-61615-5_3, ©TheAuthor(s) 2018 51