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Effects of Chemical Environment on UVC Aging of Microplastics
Citation:
Hadynski, J., S. Al-Abed, P. Potter, D. Shields, D. Duvvuru, D. Tran, AND R. Venkatapathy. Effects of Chemical Environment on UVC Aging of Microplastics. American Chemical Society Spring Meeting, New Orleans, LA, March 17 - 21, 2024.
Impact/Purpose:
Microplastics are a pollutant of rising concern due to their prevalence. Identifying and characterizing microplastics is of great importance in monitoring their presence in the environment. However, this depends on the use of a database which currently only consists of pristine microplastics while microplastics found in the environment are likely to have been affected chemically and/or physically by weathering in the environment before being detected. This research expands the database used in the laser direct infrared spectroscopy identification method to include weathered samples and assesses the effects of the updated database on identifying microplastics in environmental samples. These findings should influence future studies on microplastic weathering and its effects on identifying and characterizing microplastics in environmental samples.
Description:
As production of plastic production and consumption continues to grow so too does environmental plastic pollution. Plastic pollution occurs in several sizes including macroplastics, nanoplastics, and microplastics. The detection and characterization of microplastics is essential to determining their effects on the environment, however the environment may also chemically affect the microplastics themselves (microplastic aging) leading to differences in spectroscopic characteristics and thus difficulties in characterization of aged microplastics. This work describes the effects of varying the chemical environment using common environmental species in a UVC aging chamber on several types of pristine microplastics. This work focuses on changes in infrared spectra affecting identification of microplastics via laser direct infrared (LDIR) techniques.