The PhD student Albert Vega, from the ONHEALTH group, will defend his thesis on 11th July at 10:30h in Aula Magna Enric Casassas, Faculty of Chemistry (University of Barcelona)
Title: Micro and nanoplastics in the environment: development of mass-quantitative analytical methodologies for the global impact assessment
Directors: Marinella Farré and Esteban Abad
Thesis Committee: Oscar Núñez, Enrico Bergamaschi and Ricard Marcos
Abstract:
Micro and nanoplastics (MNPLs) are considered contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) due to their detrimental environmental and human health effects already reported in recent literature and because current legislation applied in developed countries is not able to regulate these effectively enough or simply does not exist in most developing countries. Plastic pollution concerns the scientific community because of its continuous introduction to the environment and the poor consensus regarding the impact at global scale and its potential toxic effects associated with living organisms that are still poorly understood. Moreover, there is a lack of harmonised quantitative analytical methodologies able to estimate plastic pollution’s impact in terms of mass concentration. The main current scientifc advances published for these purposes are related to microscopy, spectroscopy or nanometric techniques that are more suitable for successful particle characterisation (nature, size and shape) and qualitative extrapolations based on plastic particle-counting approaches which are unsuitable to provide real quantitative measurements.
In the present context of climate change, circular economy processes acquire increased importance and there is a need to understand what micro(nano)plastics are, as well as their different origin sources, their occurrence, fate, behaviour in the environment, and the different human exposure routes. In this sense, in this doctoral thesis, mass-quantitative analytical methodologies based on liquid and pyrolysis-gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry have been developed and applied to samples collected from different environmental compartments and marine biota in order to assess the plastic pollution by MNPLs abundance and to give a comprehensive global view. Target and suspect screening approaches have been applied to obtain the polymeric and plastic additives composition. Moreover, various MNPLs human exposure routes have been also evaluated through contaminated food (mussels previously exposed), drinking water taken from household taps located in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, and bottled water in single-use plastic bottles from the 20 most popular commercial brands in Spain.
Thus, this thesis contributes to enhance the understanding and knowledge about MNPLs pollution, putting special emphasis on the occurrence, fate, and behaviour of these contaminants in atmospheric and aquatic ecosystems from areas close to populated zones to remote regions, the potential exposure to marine biota, and ultimately, to humans. In addition, the analytical methodologies presented here will help to address the scientific community regarding the current lack of mass-quantitative methods available in order to tackle plastic pollution through real and more accurate MNPLs-polymers abundances at ultra-trace levels, and finally, to obtain a more comprehensive view of the real impact of these contaminants on the environment and the subsequent potential threats associated with living organisms through the main exposure pathways.
