Webinar of Dr Enora PRADO
November 20th 2024
Microplastic pollution in Ocean: an overview on their variability and analytical difficulties
Home institution: IFREMER
Synopsis
Contamination of the global environment by anthropogenic particles such as microplastic (MP) is receiving worldwide attention with national and international efforts driven by a common goal to understand the fate and risk of these pollutants. It requires a deep knowledge to better understand their mapping and dynamic distribution across the global ocean and in the several compartment of the marine ecosystem (i.e. surface, water column, sediment, biota). Analysis of environmental samples is challenging, Development of analytical tools needs to focus on the following critical steps such as sample preparation and particles isolation, physical characterization and chemical identification of particles. So far there is no standardized analytical protocols. The analytical methodology must be adapted to each type of sample depending on the presence of organic and/or mineral matter, particulate charges or the size of the targeted particles, for example. A specificity of environmental samples is the large morphological variability of particles in terms of size, shape and polymeric nature. Through several scientific projects investigating plastic contamination of various marine environments (estuarine, offshore, Polynesian atolls, etc), different methodologies developed for MP analysis by vibrational spectroscopies (Raman and IR) will be presented, compared and discussed. A specific focus on microfibers analysis will also be presented. Indeed, the difficulty to characterise microfibers, links to the shape and diameter size, induces than this type of MP pollution is often disregard. Recent results underline to consider this part of MP pollution and highlight the high need for reliable and applicable analytical tools. This analysis is subject to great qualitative variability due to the absence of a regulatory framework from sample preparation to analysis. This work requires the optimization of preparation and analysis methods or the establishment of uniform metrological processes. It is also important to estimate the rate of particle loss during sample preparation as well as the error rate related to their analysis.
