TY - JOUR
T1 - Polyethylene Terephthalate and Polycarbonate Microplastics in Sewage Sludge Collected from the United States
AU - Zhang, Junjie
AU - Wang, Lei
AU - Halden, Rolf U.
AU - Kannan, Kurunthachalam
N1 - Funding Information:
Conception of study, design, and analysis were performed at Wadsworth Center. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41722304), the 111 Program of the Ministry of Education, China (T2017002), and the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC 201806200120). The study was funded, in part, by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Grant U2CES026542-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2019/11/12
Y1 - 2019/11/12
N2 - Microplastics (MPs) are emerging pollutants of public health and environmental concern. Sewage sludge is a sink for MPs that originate from domestic sources and can provide an indication of the magnitude of discharge of MPs by local populations. Nevertheless, reports of quantitative analysis of MPs present in sewage sludge are limited. In this study, 65 sewage sludge samples collected from sewage treatment plants (STPs) across the United States were analyzed for MPs originating from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polycarbonate (PC) using alkali-assisted thermal depolymerization and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. PET and PC were detected in all sludge samples at concentrations (dry weight) in the ranges of 28-12000 μg/g (median of 370 μg/g) and 0.70-8400 μg/g (median of 5.9 μg/g), respectively. The concentrations of PET and PC varied, depending on the treatment capacity of the STPs. The annual environmental emission of MPs through sludge disposal was estimated at 3700000 kg/year for PET and 310000 kg/year for PC. Our results provide a quantitative estimate of emission of MPs through land application of sludge.
AB - Microplastics (MPs) are emerging pollutants of public health and environmental concern. Sewage sludge is a sink for MPs that originate from domestic sources and can provide an indication of the magnitude of discharge of MPs by local populations. Nevertheless, reports of quantitative analysis of MPs present in sewage sludge are limited. In this study, 65 sewage sludge samples collected from sewage treatment plants (STPs) across the United States were analyzed for MPs originating from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polycarbonate (PC) using alkali-assisted thermal depolymerization and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. PET and PC were detected in all sludge samples at concentrations (dry weight) in the ranges of 28-12000 μg/g (median of 370 μg/g) and 0.70-8400 μg/g (median of 5.9 μg/g), respectively. The concentrations of PET and PC varied, depending on the treatment capacity of the STPs. The annual environmental emission of MPs through sludge disposal was estimated at 3700000 kg/year for PET and 310000 kg/year for PC. Our results provide a quantitative estimate of emission of MPs through land application of sludge.
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U2 - 10.1021/acs.estlett.9b00601
DO - 10.1021/acs.estlett.9b00601
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074687255
SN - 2328-8930
VL - 6
SP - 650
EP - 655
JO - Environmental Science and Technology Letters
JF - Environmental Science and Technology Letters
IS - 11
ER -