Proceedings

It is estimated that between 63,000 and 430,000 tons of microplastics (MPs) are added per year in European farmlands from the use of biosolids as fertilizers. In this fashion, agricultural soils may represent a major environmental reservoir of MPs. Several studies have been devoted to the determination of MPs in sludge samples. Nevertheless, comparison and synthesis of the data is difficult because of the lack of consistency across the studies. Hence, there is a need for standardized and robust methods to identify and quantify MPs so that data from different sources can be fairly compared. In this paper, results of a validation protocol for the separation, identification and quantitation of MPs in biosolids will be presented. Our results indicate that organic components and the presence of additional contaminants complicates the extraction of MPs from biosolids. However, the inclusion of a clean-up step with Fenton’s reagent seems a promising solution.