Microplastics in freshwaters and drinking water: critical review and assessment of data quality
Koelmans AA, Mohamed Nor NH, Hermsen E, Kooi M, Mintenig SM, De France J (2019). Water Research.
What they found
Scoring 50 studies of microplastics in freshwater and drinking water against quality criteria, the authors found only 4 met all of them. Reported concentrations spanned ten orders of magnitude (0.01 to 10^8 particles per cubic metre). Polyethylene and polypropylene were most common, then polystyrene, PVC and PET. They propose best practice for sampling, blanks and identification.
- Sample
- 50 studies of freshwater, groundwater, tap and bottled water
- What it can't tell you
- Covers studies up to early 2019; methods have improved since. Quality scores are the authors' own criteria. Does not assess health risk directly. Funded by WHO, with a WHO co-author.
- Funding
- World Health Organization (contract 2018/825515-0), per acknowledgements.
- Topics
- Methods, Drinking water
- Checked against
- Abstract (Europe PMC, PMID 30861380); funding from open-access full text (PMC6449537)