Separation and Identification of Microplastics in Digestive System of Bivalves

Publication date: May 2018Source: Chinese Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Volume 46, Issue 5Author(s): Jin-Feng DING, Jing-Xi LI, Cheng-Jun SUN, Chang-Fei HE, Feng-Hua JIANG, Feng-Lei GAO, Li ZHENGAbstractA pretreatment method was established for separating microplastics from digestive system of bivalve sample. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of microplastics was carried out by micro-Fourier transformed infrared (μ-FT-IR) spectroscope and Stereo microscope. The method was applied to analyze the microplastics in the digestive system in Chlamys farreri and Mytilus galloprovincialis. The results showed that the digestion system of using 10% KOH had high digestion efficiency. With this digestion system, the recoveries of polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) ranged from 96.7% to 98.6%, with relative standard deviation (RSD, n = 3) of ≤ 3.19%. We collected Chlamys farreri from local markets (n = 50) and Mytilus galloprovincialis from both local markets (n = 50) and wild environments (n = 15) in Qingdao, China. The results showed that microplastics were found in over 80% of the individuals purchased from the market and 40% of the wild collected individuals. The average abundance of microplastics in Chlamys farreri purchased from different markets varied between 5.2 and 19.4 items/individual or between 3.2 and 7.1 items g−1 (wet weight of digestive system), while in Mytilus galloprovincialis, the numbers varied between 1.9 a...
Source: Chinese Journal of Analytical Chemistry - Category: Chemistry Source Type: research